Stolen Light Tower Recovered After a Year Missing in San Bernardino County
- June 11, 2012
- recovery stories
After the owners of a 2006 Ingersoll-Rand Light Tower reported the equipment stolen to the Indio Police Department, officers completed a theft report and had the equipment’s information entered into the nationwide law enforcement crime database. This routine police action automatically activated the LoJack transponder concealed in the equipment, prompting the transponder to begin emitting a silent homing signal. Neither the owners nor law enforcement had to do anything else to activate the LoJack Vehicle Recovery Network, because LoJack’s interface with the police is both seamless and instantaneous.
Ten minutes later, units from multiple police agencies – San Bernardino Police Department, California Highway Patrol, Colton Police Department and the San Bernardino County Auto Theft Taskforce (SANCATT) – began picking up the equipment’s homing signal on the LoJack Police Tracking Computers installed in their patrol vehicles. Following the computers’ directional signal, the officers isolated the signal to a business on “E” Street, just south of Inland Center Drive in the City of San Bernardino. There, they observed the light tower through the open bay doors, inside a radio installation shop. SANCATT investigators and uniformed San Bernardino officers located the owner, who stated that he had purchased the unit on EBay more than a year ago. He was advised that it was stolen property and it would need to be confiscated. The light tower was seized and returned to a Hertz Corporation employee. SANCATT is conducting further into this investigation.
The LoJack Vehicle Recovery System was installed on the tower at Hertz Berkeley, Ca. on March 31, 2009.