A London couple used a hidden AirTag to recover their stolen car, after police wouldn’t recover it, despite their being able to provide the location of the vehicle.
The couple had luck on their side when it came to the location of the purloined Jaguar E-Pace, as it was only nine minutes away. However, as reported by BBC News, they didn’t have any luck when it came to the London Metropolitan Police.
Mia Forbes Pirie and husband Mark Simpson of Hammersmith, discovered that their $57,000 Jaguar was not where they had parked it.
Ms Forbes Pirie said: “I went to use the car that morning, walking up and down the street and I was unable to find it, with my husband saying he hadn’t moved it.
“I thought it was weird, we both thought it was unlikely it was stolen because it had two immobilisers and so I was quite shocked and my stomach dropped.”
They immediately called the police. However, police offered a “vague” response. Despite telling the coppers that the car had an AirTag in it and could be tracked to its exact location, police were not excited about going to find the car, so the couple used the tracker to locate the vehicle in Chiswick – and retrieved it themselves.
“I wanted to act quite quickly as my fear was that we would find the AirTag and not the car when it was discarded on to the street without the car,” said Forbes Pirie, “so I told them that we were planning to head to the location.”
The couple said the police basically told them to give them a call if they needed assistance when they went to recover the car.
“It felt like a bit of an adventure, it was exciting, a little bit of a fun thing to do, to see if we could find our car,” continued Forbes Pirie. “I didn’t really think car thieves would hurt us, more that they would try to get away.”
While tracking down and recovering your car from crminals is always a bad idea, that didn’t deter the couple from playing Batman and Robin (we’ll leave them to argue as to who is who), the tracked the vehicle to where it was parked in Chiswick. Luckily for the Dynamic Duo, the thieves were nowhere to be found.
While the thieves had managed to bypass the immobilizer that came as standard equipment with the car, they were unable to defeat the secons one installed by the couple, leaving the car where it stopped. The couple were able to start the vehicle and return it to its rightful parking place after contacting the immobilizing firm and proving ownership.
“I think I thought the police would act quicker considering they had a location for it, but I know they also very stretched,” concluded Forbes Pirie.
AirTags have become a popular method for tracking items that may be lost or stolen, including vehicles. For safety reasons, Apple, Mactrast, and police warn against attempting to recover stolen vehicles (or any stolen item, really) but are advised instead to contact law enforcement. (And hopefully, law enforcement will respond better than London Police did.)