LoJack in Miami Police Helicopter Aids Enables Recovery of Honda Motorcycle, Arrest of Thief
- April 24, 2012
- recovery stories
On Monday morning, March 5, 2012, the owner of a 2006 Honda CBR600 motorcycle contacted the Fort Lauderdale Police Department to report the motorcycle stolen.
Upon arrival at the scene, the responding officer met with the owner who stated that someone had stolen their Honda CBR600 motorcycle from where they had parked it. The officer prepared a stolen vehicle report and had the motorcycle’s information entered into the federal and state crime computers. This routine police procedure automatically activated the LoJack transponder concealed in the Honda CBR600 motorcycle.
Later that afternoon, a Miami-Dade Police Department pilot received the silent LoJack signal from the stolen Honda’s LoJack unit, and began tracking the stolen vehicle by following the directional and signal strength cues on their aircraft’s LoJack Police Tracking Computer. The signal led the pilot to an area near S.W. 44th Street and 162nd Avenue. There, the pilot observed the motorcycle in the rear yard of a house in the 4400 block of S.W. 162nd Place. The pilot requested that ground units respond to the area. The first officer on the scene was a Miami-Dade School Police officer, who set up surveillance on the house in question.
When Miami-Dade Police Department officers and an auto theft detective arrived, the officers knocked on the door of the home and were invited into the house and backyard, where they located the stolen motorcycle. The owner of the house was arrested for Grand Theft Auto. The motorcycle was recovered with ignition damage, towed to the police impound yard for safekeeping, and removed from the police crime computer systems.
The LoJack Vehicle Recovery System was installed in this 2006 Honda CBR600 motorcycle on June 14, 2006, and has been protecting it ever since.