Tracking technology leads to Police arrests and recovery

National survey and engineering services company, Survey Solutions, reports that following the roadside theft of one of its total stations fitted with a tracking device, Police were able to recover the instrument within 2 hours and make several arrests.

The stolen instrument was a Trimble S5 Total Station supplied by UK Trimble distributor KOREC and one of several recently purchased by Survey Solutions. All of these instruments came equipped with Trimble’s Locate 2 Protect’ (L2P) tracking technology which allows logged-in users to see their position at any time.

The theft happened whilst an engineering surveyor was completing a topographical survey in the Midlands only a few miles from a Survey Solutions regional office. East Midlands Police were immediately informed of the theft and sent a Police car to assist local Survey Solutions staff in the search. The tracking software not only managed to identify the street where the instrument was located but also pinpointed the actual house.

The data from the tracker, along with a positive identification of a car used in the crime outside the house, provided the Police with sufficient grounds to gain access to the property where the Trimble S5 was found along with several other stolen items and the Police subsequently made several arrests.

James Cooper, Managing Director of Survey Solutions said, “This isn’t the first time that we’ve been affected by total station theft having had 12 instruments stolen in similar incidents, only one of which has since been recovered and none of which had tracking devices. On this occasion, the ability to track our Trimble S-Series instrument with L2P technology is clearly a step in the right direction and has proved invaluable. The cost of asset theft goes way beyond equipment replacement, it causes tremendous distress to the surveyors involved and significant financial loss to business, therefore the successful recovery of stolen property and consequent arrests are something we need to make a noise about if tracking technology is to become a deterrent to thieves as well as a way to recover instruments.”