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Ten Cops Can't Recover Police Chief's Son's iPhone
Hugh Pickens writes "The Oakland Tribune reports that when Berkeley police Chief Michael Meehan's son's cell phone was stolen from a school locker in January, ten police officers were sent to track down the stolen iPhone, with some working overtime at taxpayer expense. 'If your cell phone was stolen or my cell phone was stolen, I don't think any officer would be investigating it,' says Michael Sherman, vice chairman of the Berkeley Police Review Commission, a city watchdog group. 'They have more important things to do. We have crime in the streets.' But the kicker is that even with all those cops swarming around, looking for an iPhone equipped with the Find My iPhone tracking software, police were not able to locate the phone. 'If 10 cops who know a neighborhood can't find an iPhone that's broadcasting its location, that shouldn't give you a lot of confidence in your own vigilante recovery of a stolen iProduct,' writes Alexis Madrigal. 'Just saying. Consider this a PSA: just buy a new phone.'"
Meanwhile, and where I live, the police did recover my brother's cheap-ass Nokia. The cop just sent a request for the phone's location to the mobile operator, along with my brother's signed statement on how he had lost his phone, identified a teenage kid who had stolen before, stopped by his house and got the phone back. Then they called my brother to go pick it up.
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I think it illustrates limitations in the technology more than human incompetence. The service can't find your phone. It can tell you that your phone is near 55th and San Pedro, but it's not going to tell you which house and room the thing is sitting in, or whose pocket it has been put in. I bet I can stash a phone "near" any intersection in the country and you wouldn't be able to find it with only that information.
Notice that I'm not suggesting a solution... the service does what it does, but it's not a panacea for finding lost things.
I bet I can find the stolen iPhone. I would do what every other LE officer would do. He would walk up to the location and then call the lost iPhone's cell number. Then with probable cause he could seize any phone that rang and was answered matching the audio he heard with his observation of the suspects lips.
This happens nearly every day in the USA. I think it is hilarious when the cops seize guns and a large drug stash at the same time from the perp and his urban buddies. My favorite form of instant justice is hearing there were panicked perps who jumped out of a second floor or higher window injuring themselves only to be caught by more backup cops waiting below.