Lawyer couple 'steal back' their stolen car after tracking it with Apple AirTag
A couple in London, U.K., stole back their car after they experienced a lack of police support in recovering the stolen vehicle, the wife said in a post on LinkedIn.
'I have to confess … it was kind of fun stealing back our own car… ,' Mia Forbes Pirie, 48, wrote.
An international mediator, facilitator and coach, Forbes Pirie referred to her husband Mark Simpson, 62, as her partner in 'un-crime.' The husband, as per his LinkedIn profile, is a commercial barrister in Greater London.
'But it does make me wonder whether we should have had to do that,' she continued in the LinkedIn post. 'And not whether it's normal, but whether it's right that the police seem to have no interest in investigating what is likely to have been a reasonably sophisticated operation involving a flat bed truck… if there are no consequences, what is the incentive for people not to do more of this?'
Their car, a Jaguar and reportedly worth over $85,000, was stolen from near their residence in Brook Green, West London. According to The Times, the lawyer couple, after contacting the police, were told that the Metropolitan Police reportedly wouldn't be able to investigate. 'Instead, the couple suggested they could find the vehicle themselves and were told to call 101 if they found it,' The Independent reports.
The couple noticed the car missing a week ago, with the AirTag locating it to their road, in what may have been a 'cooling-off period' for the stolen car that one Canadian car owner was made aware of in May last year.
CAA Quebec spokesperson and former police commander André Durocher told CTV News that after a vehicle is stolen, thieves will often leave the stolen vehicle nearby.
'They want to see if there's going to be police surveillance to check the vehicle, if there was a tag [to track it], so it's very standard procedure for car theft rings to function that way,' Durocher told CTV.
The AirTag for the car in London later pinged from Chiswick, which is where the couple eventually found it with interior and carpets ripped off.
The Metropolitan Police, in a statement to The Independent, confirmed that they were alerted to a car theft on June 3. 'Officers spoke to the victim, who shared his intention to recover the vehicle himself. An Apple AirTag was inside, allowing the victim to view its location and trace it. The victim was reminded by officers to contact police again as needed or if police assistance was necessary at the vehicle's location. At 11:23hrs the victim confirmed with police that he had found the vehicle and that it was being recovered by a truck back to the victim's home address.'
'The police are under-resourced and it's a shame,' The Independent reports Forbes Pirie as saying. 'Since we've found it, lots of people have touched the car and the police say that they're going to look underneath the carpets and at the fuse box to see if there are prints there. But it wouldn't have cost very much for them to tell us not to touch anything. That's the one criticism I have.'
The police said the investigation is ongoing and that no arrests have been made at this stage.
Canada has become a very scary place to own a vehicle right now
Instead of getting their stolen car back, Canadian couple received $156 parking ticket
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