GPS Tracking Device in Pink Teddy Bear Traps Charity Donations Thief
7 Aug 2014Atlanta News, Weather, Traffic, and Sports | FOX 5
A teddy bear equipped with a GPS tracking device helps track down a Georgia charity donations thief.
A burglar in Athens, Georgia has been detained and charged, after confessing to the crime, thanks to a GPS tracker that was placed inside a pink teddy bear at a local charity donation site.
After clothes were reportedly stolen from a local donation drop-off box in the Georgia Square Mall in Athens, clever charity organizers placed a pink teddy bear trap — in the form of a GPS tracking device.
While Global Positioning Systems (GPS) have been used for navigational properties for civilians and military personnel for decades, applications of the technology is proving to be highly beneficial for tracking criminals.
From bank robbers to prescription medication thieves, In places all over the country, criminals have been caught by placing a tracker with GPS technology in an item that is at risk of being stolen.
Here’s how it works: The unsuspecting criminal steals the item(s) along with the hidden GPS tracking device. Once the stolen goods (and the GPS tracker) is out of its acceptable location range, an alarm goes off to alert the owner, who has an app on their mobile phone or computer. The owner can then alert police, and the tracker helps lead law enforcement to the perpetrator’s location.
This is exactly how it went down with the charity drop-off location. This particular location had been having issues with clothing stolen from its drop-off bins. In order to prevent this from happening, the charity organizers placed a pink stuffed teddy bear with a tracker in the bin and waited for it to move.
Within a few days, they received the alert that the bear had indeed been moved.
Police at the Athens-Clarke County Police Department were alerted by the tracking device and began following the tracker. It led them to a separate donation drop-off bin location. The thief was putting clothes back into the bin, most allegedly to cover his tracks. When they arrived, Melvin Wilder confessed to the crime and he was arrested on the spot.
After the arrest, Tim Peck for Mid-Atlantic Clothing Recycling, said,
“This is not a one-time event it is ongoing rampant and costing us a lot of money. Probably, this is tens of thousands of dollars, if not more.”
Peck and his team noticed they were losing about 35 percent of donated items, mostly clothing, from theft. While they are a for-profit business selling to various brokers, they also donate a portion of their profits to DARE America.
Not only was this teddy bear equipped with a tracking device, but nearly 90 other stuffed animals across their multiple drop-off locations are now getting the same treatment in order to catch more criminals. They hope to put a stop to the series of thefts when people become aware of the arrests. Additionally, the police department figured out there was a large black market for used clothing stolen from similar types of places in the area.
Comments are closed.