Stolen and recovered within 3 hours

Credits: M&P Survey & PLP Construction Ltd

LOC8 is an asset protection and anti-theft solution integrated into select Leica Geosystems Total Stations that incorporates the latest positioning and communications technologies. Providing, both indoors and outdoors, understanding where you assets are.

After a long week, and a hard day's work on a Friday evening in Manchester, PLP Construction's Site Engineer had packed up his kit and tools, loaded it into his van and headed to the gym on his way home. On his return to the van, it quickly became clear that the hired Leica TS16 was missing and had been stolen. The theft was reported to Greater Manchester Police, and a crime reference number was provided. 

What happened once the equipment had been stolen?

As the equipment was on hire from M&P Survey Equipment Ltd, a call was made out-of-hours to notify their hiredesk. As all of their state-of-the-art TS16 hire fleet is protected by LOC8, the hiredesk immediately logged into the web portal and checked the status of the reported stolen equipment.

An up-to-the-minute on-demand position was requested and the update rate set to every 1 minute to follow the stolen goods. The live position was then shared to PLP Construction using a link that displays on a Google Maps page without the need to log in to the owner's account or the manual sending of map screenshots.

Tracked and retrieved...

The LOC8 enabled TS16 was tracked and observed to stop at a fast food restaurant before continuing to a residential address where it remained stationary. LOC8 clearly pinpointed the location and PLP Construction contacted the police, this time in the jurisdiction of Lancashire Police and explained a high value asset was stolen, had been tracked and was now stationary. Lancashire Police identified the address was registered to a known offender and a police officer was dispatched and arrived within 10 minutes.

Whilst a police officer confronted a person returning to the property, suspecting that the other people within the property may run off, the Engineer went to observe from the front. An occupant at the property emerged from the house and hurried back inside. The individual that the police were talking to was told by an occupant of the property to hand over the boxes to the police. They were then warned against stealing survey equipment as it is always tracked. No arrests were made at the time as the investigation is still ongoing as a joint operation between the two police forces.

The police are currently collating evidence to build a prosecution, the TS16 was returned to PLP Construction's Site Engineer without adding any further inconvenience such as impounding the stolen equipment for forensic analysis.

From the web portal, the day's tracking history was exported with timestamps and Google Maps position links where the route taken was shown, allowing the timestamp for the stop at the restaurant to be queried to request corresponding CCTV footage to assist in the reconstruction of the timeline following the theft

Special Acknowledgements...

Leica Geosystems would like to thank M&P Survey Equipment Ltd, PLP Construction Ltd, Lancashire Police and Greater Manchester Police for the prompt assistance, contributions and permissions to reproduces images in this TruStory and the successful recovery of a theft.

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