Dodge Caravan Stolen from Street in Queens; NYPD Officers Recover Vehicle with Only Minor Damage
- March 29, 2012
- recovery stories
The owner of a 1998 Dodge Caravan parked and locked his vehicle on the street where he lives in the Rosedale section of Queens, confines of the 105pct. When he returned for it on the morning of March 7, 2012, he found it missing and immediately called the NYPD to report the theft.
When NYPD officers arrived, they took a written report and had this information entered into the state and federal police crime databases. This routine police action automatically activated the LoJack transponder concealed within the Dodge Caravan. This activation prompted the transponder to begin emitting a silent homing signal to all police vehicles equipped with a LoJack Police Tracking Computer. No further action was required on the part of the owner or law enforcement agents to activate the system, as LoJack’s interface with the police is both seamless and instantaneous.
A short while later, officers with the Queens South Auto Larceny Unit picked up the silent homing signal from the stolen Caravan. Following the directional and signal strength cues on their onboard tracking computers, the officers tracked the Caravan through the Queens South area, and eventually located the abandoned vehicle on a residential street in the Cambria Heights section of Queens. They conducted a brief surveillance of the Caravan, but when no one returned for it, they took the vehicle into custody. The Caravan was recovered with some minor damage to the ignition, and the middle seat was missing, suggesting that the vehicle was used to facilitate a theft of some kind.
The owner was notified and was elated to learn that his vehicle was recovered so quickly, especially with such minor damage.