Find My iPhone Works

Late last week I was dispatched to a burglary of a motor vehicle report call. Usually, it takes about 5 minutes to gather the necessary information from the complainant. I need their contact information, the vehicle information, and a description of whatever they left in plain sight that was stolen from their vehicle. However, this call was going to be a little different. 

When I arrived, the complainant, J, was outside with her boyfriend waiting for my arrival. The boyfriend had an Apple laptop in his hands. J was holding an iPhone and immediately told me that she knew where her stolen phone was located. In my head, I was thinking, "wonderful, this is going to be a wild goose chase." 

A little background information might be helpful at this point. There is an app in the Apple App Store called Find My iPhone. Once you download the app to your iPhone or iPad, the app will ask you to sign in with your Apple ID. Then in the privacy settings on your device, you go into the location settings and you enable Find My iPhone. Now, when you launch the Find My iPhone app, you will see a list of all of the devices associated with your Apple ID. Every device associated with your Apple ID that has Find My iPhone enabled will now show up on a map. There are four iPhones and three iPads associated with my Apple ID and I can see their location with this app most of the time. I have used the app to figure out where my wife is eating dinner when she is out of town. Then I will text her and ask how she is enjoying whichever restaurant. She loves when I do that.

Back to J and her stolen iPhone. She showed me on her boyfriend's iPhone the current location of her stolen iPhone. It was about a mile away. I told her that I would go check it out. She wanted to follow me to the location. For some reason, I agreed and she followed. When I arrived, there was no one on the street. J pulled up beside my patrol car and said that the phone was now in another location which was another mile away. And the goose chase was under way. At this point, I did not want J following me around any longer. I took the iPhone from her that she was using to track her iPhone and told her to go home. 

On my way to the new location, Find My iPhone showed that the stolen iPhone was on the move. The last location was in the middle of the block between two major streets. When I turned onto the street, it was deserted except for one male walking away from me on the sidewalk carrying a backpack. Bingo.

I rolled down my windows and pulled up to him in the middle of the street. I instructed him to walk to my patrol car and to place his hands on the hood. He started walking toward the car and as I was exiting the patrol car, he decided to turn and run. This is where Crossfit comes in handy. 

I took off after him. When I got about 15 feet from him, I yelled, "I'm going to catch you, and when I do, it is going to hurt." He glanced back, ran about 10 more feet, and then stopped and put his hands in the air. 

I found the stolen iPhone in his back pocket. He had two flashlights with him and said that he had just gotten off of probation yesterday. He had two previous convictions for burglary of a motor vehicle, so this time it was going to be a felony. 

I returned to the original location of the burglary to return the phone and to gather all of the necessary information for the report. J was extremely happy that I had recovered her iPhone. I have read a few similar stories of using the Find My iPhone app to locate a stolen iPhone, and it was cool to see it actually work.