“A police officer with the University of Illinois at Chicago used an Apple iPhone app to help Chicago police track down two men believed responsible for a spree of home invasions over the weekend,” Rosemary Sobol reports for The Chicago Tribune.
“Authorities charged Aaron Smith, 22, of South Bend, Ind., with six counts of home invasion and one count of aggravated discharge of a firearm, according to Chicago police. His alleged accomplice, Joe Parker, 20, of the 5500 block of South Aberdeen Street, was charged with three counts of home invasion,” Sobol reports. “Police said they have tied Smith and Parker to three separate home invasions — two on the North Side and one in the in the University Village neighborhood — all occurring Saturday. Police said the two suspects pistol-whipped a woman and two men and ordered them into a bathroom at gunpoint while they stole an iPhone and others items at a home invasion in the 1100 block of West 13th Street.”
Sobol reports, “The break in the case came when a UIC police officer, who was assisting Chicago officers, used a GPS monitoring application on one of the victims’ phones and tracked the home invaders.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Whit D.” for the heads up.]
who steals phones anymore, idiots… GOOD WORK POLICE and APPLE👍
My sons girlfriend lives about 4 hours away, and she spends the weekend at our house every couple of weeks. She has an iPhone, and it is really great to be able to track her progress home, especially in bad weather.
Oh my god what an invasion of her privacy…. Just kidding…. But one mans security is another mans stalker…. Believe me dude there are those that will think that… Not me… But the paranoid among see anything resembling wanting to secure someone’s safety via electronic surveillance as an infringement of their right to privacy …. Especially the will point pug that you can continue the monitoring after she arrives safely…. And what will they say if you break up….
I once let a little girl cross a dangerous street alone for fear of what it might look like if I attempted to help her….But my hesitation because of a fear of being accused of some impropriety was not unjustified in this day and age.
Sorry about the errors… Auto correct is at it again. Of course typing on this phone keyboard makes it worse… And before the rants start… I like auto correct… I just have to pay more attention …. Everyone cool with that mea culpa.
Dude, I’m pretty sure she has to opt-in to the monitoring. You can’t use “Find My Friends” on someone without their consent. (Unless you grab her phone and sneakily “opt in” for her while she’s not looking.)
By the way, I get nervous when my wife takes long car trips without me (because she was lucky not to be killed in an accident she had while we were dating). I thought about asking her if I could use “Find My Friends” and nixed the idea myself. All I’d need would be for her to take a detour to do some shopping or get something to eat, and the panicked phone call from me wouldn’t be good for either of us.
——RM