Great story Purple Tail. It reminds me of a friends story.

He was in New Zealand at Lake Taupo on his honeymoon many years ago when his bike was stolen. He immediately began going to all the local bike shops and looking for his bike or its parts. At the second bike shop he not only found his bike but the thief attempting to sell it to the bike shop. He acted interested in the bike while alerting the owner to call the police who responded immediately and nabbed the thief. They then found his accomplice in a nearby hotel and locked them up. My wife and I arrived in NZ after them only to see my friend pictured on the front page of the NZ Herald with his bike and Lake Taupo in the background. The headline read "Yank Nabs Bike Thief" In a country as small as NZ with only the one major newspaper he became an instant celebrity and was known all over NZ for the rest of the journey. We had strangers coming up to say hello to Bob and apologizing for the behavior of the thieves.

 

He should have gone through CrimeStoppers instead of government bureaucrats.

 

Very cool! And nice work!!

 

Good news, with a happy ending. The sad thing is property crime just isn't a priority for law enforcement. Unless its a jewel heist, your police report is just going into a soon to be forgotten file. A better system needs to be implimated to motivate either law enforcement or others to do the looking for stolen goods that are resold. Maybe a bounty system paid for by insurance companies and forced restitution by the thief to pay the organization or individuals who solve the crime and return the goods. Clearly only one person (in this case) had any skin in the game to motivate and solve this crime (and at that had to jump through hoops to get the law to even clamp the perp!)

 

I'm glad that you got your computer back, however, I would have liked the story to include the prosecution of the 19 year old for aiding and abetting the original thief. The fact that the college kid decided to "help" the police in locating the actual thief doesn't negate the fact that he was actually a big part in the scheme. Hopefully the thief was found and the police confiscated the college kids computers and tried to search back for other computers the kid sold illegally, by checking his email accounts and emails to potential buyers.

JJ

 

Good news!!

I love it when the bad guys get caught

Get a rope.......

 

The details I left out after I called the Seattle PD were pretty frustrating to say the least. When first contacting them I got a desk jockey officer that was very rude and not very sympathetic. When I told him that I had been in contact with the seller and had set up a meeting at a specific time and that I just need a detective to show up and arrest him he responded with "We can't just go arresting people on your word...I don't know if we have anyone available to assist you, we are busy and under staffed, blah, blah, blah." He did take down my info and he said a detective would contact me, he just didn't know how long that would take.

The same officer call me back about an hour later saying that he ran the serial number on my computer and nothing is coming up in the national database as stolen so there was nothing the Seattle PD could do for me. He suggested that I call the LVPD back since that is where I filed the original police report with and update them with any information that I had. So I get in my car and drive to my local PD and get face to face with someone that can speed this process up. Besides I'm suppose to meeting the thief in about about 5 hours! LVPD had filed my first call at such a low priority that it had NOT been entered into the national database. What! After I told the LV officer my story with all of my updated info and supporting documents (my laptop receipt with the SN# and the Craig's List ad with my SN# on it) they updated my police report and got it entered into the national system immediately. Awesome! Now Seattle PD can find it and go get the guy. Not so fast.

So I call the desk jockey officer in Seattle back, tell him my computer is now in the national system and he should have everything he needs to go get this guy. His response "Well I'll pass this information along but we have not received any calls from the LVPD asking for our assistance in closing this case for them" WHAT?! Jerk. So now I have to call LVPD and get the lady I had talk to earlier in the day on the phone and tell her what Seattle PD is telling me. I gave her the officers name and phone number to call in Seattle to authorize and ask the Seattle PD for help in catching this guy and getting my computer back.

I'm supposed to meeting the seller in about 2 hours and finally a detective calls me. He was very helpful, said he had read the report and would go meet this guy at McD's in my place. All he needed was the string of text messages I had on my phone so he could know what me and the seller had discussed and he would take it from there. BOOM!

You know the rest. Point is the police department initially didn't want to help but it was my persistence that evenly paid off.

 

JJ~

I was shocked when the detective told me that he probably would NOT be able to arrest the seller UNLESS the seller was an Alaska Airlines baggage handler or confessed to knowingly selling stolen property. Meaning, all you have to do is play dumb and you can get away with it.

In this case the kid admitted to buying the computer from someone else really cheap but was unaware (yea right) that the laptop was stolen. The detective asked him if he had any more computers and the kid admitted to having 2 more back at his apartment. The detective said he followed him home and the kid turned them over to him. The kid also gave up all the info he had on the 3rd party guy he has been buying from.

Hopefully this kid got the crap scared out of him enough that he will walk the straight and narrow from this point forward....but who knows.

 

Great news! Good job!

 

What does it matter if the contract out or hire their own baggage handlers, dirt bags are dirt bags. Plus most of the contract handlers once worked for Alaska before the fired them and hired the contractor.

PT, nice job on getting your laptop back and letting us know what you went through.