‘Ram-raiding’ is on the rise. Here’s why
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In August 2025, a suspect drove a stolen car through a building in Pennsylvania. No, they didn’t lose control of the vehicle. The crime was a “smash and grab,” in which they smashed through the front of the Exotic Boulevard Smoke Shop and Vape Store at 3 a.m. to grab as much merchandise as possible before police arrived.
Two days later, a group of thieves hit a GameStop store in Chicago and then ran over a responding police officer while attempting to escape. The police officer didn’t suffer life-threatening injuries and opened fire on the suspects as they fled.
In late July, a different thief drove a stolen car through a sneaker store in Phoenix, Arizona, to pull off a similar crime. The same week, another suspect hit a central Florida trading card store and nabbed $30,000 in rare Pokémon cards. Sneaker stores are a common target for this kind of crime. Thieves in Washington state even hit a toy store to grab collectible Lego sets.
The rise in smash-and-grab crimes
Another term for vehicular smash-and-grab crimes is “ram-raiding.” David Johnson of the National Retail Federation said of smash-and-grab crimes: “First and foremost, these are very traumatic events. They also have the biggest potential for violence.”
The NRF reports U.S. retailers lose over $100 billion in revenue to theft each year. The cities most affected are Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay Area, Houston, and New York. These crimes can do tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage for just a few thousand dollars worth of inventory.
There are many theories about the rise in smash-and-grab crimes. But I’ll add that car theft crimes spiked during the early 2020s. Thieves discovered vulnerabilities that made multiple models easier to steal, then shared that information on sites such as TikTok. Though joyride thefts appear to finally be declining, we are seeing other crime trends—enabled by thieves who have become adept at stealing certain vehicles—on the rise. These crimes include “jugging” ATM stakeouts in stolen cars, stealing cars to nab guns and other valuable, and the unfortunate smash-and-grab trend.
