Aurora Police Department is preparing to roll out a new tracking program that would enable officials to locate stolen cars.

The goal is to spread the program, called Metro Track, across the region to make it more powerful, APD Division Chief Mark Hildebrand said at a Thursday Public Safety, Courts and Civil Service Committee meeting.

Metro Track, done in collaboration with the Colorado Auto Theft Prevention Agency (CATPA), is based on a similar program in Cook County, Illinois, and another similar program in Denver, called DenverTrack, Hildebrand said. Those interested in participating in the program can enroll with the police department, giving officers consent to track the car in the event that it gets stolen.

There will not be a fee to register, Hildebrand said.

Metro Track has been in the works for the past year, he said, and will hopefully officially launch at the end of July. 

“It’s taken awhile to get to where we are today,” Hildebrand said. “There’s a lot of logistics involved in rolling out a program like this, but we’re very close to having the kick-off for it.”

Most vehicles manufactured after 2015 have some kind of GPS system allowing manufacturers to locate the vehicle in an emergency, according to Hildebrand.

If someone’s car is stolen, they can reach out to APD and say they’re registered with Metro Track. Police would then reach out to the car’s manufacturer so they can track the vehicle and get it back. 

People with cars older than 2015 can also register, and the department will install an Apple AirTag into the car. In that case, the car owner would have the AirTag app and give the location of the car to police if it’s stolen.

For those without iPhones and cars older than 2015, police are still looking into possible other options, Hildebrand said. The choice to use Apple AirTags was based on research into the best tracking devices on the market, he said.

“We are only tracking these vehicles if they are reported stolen and we’ve been given written consent and then they give us verbal consent to track the vehicle,” he said.

In addition to tracking the vehicle, the department will also give those registered stickers for their driver’s side car window. One sticker, that states the car is being tracked by police, goes on the outside of the window, and a second sticker, which says “you are being tracked,” goes on the inside facing the driver.  

The stickers are the most powerful part of the program, Hildebrand said, as they act as a deterrent to car thieves.

DenverTrack, rolled out over a year ago, has at least 3,000 people signed up and zero cars with the stickers have been reported stolen since, he said.

Posters with the same image will go up in Aurora Municipal Jail and Arapahoe County Jail to help spread the word to possible car thieves, Hildebrand said. 

“The idea was to design a sticker that can be universally used by other agencies,” Hildebrand said. “It’s very generic … it becomes commonplace knowledge for auto thieves that if you see that sticker, go somewhere else.”

Aurora City Council allocated $25,000 for the program, which will be used to print brochures and posters and pay for the AirTags.