London Couple, car stolen, AirTag tracking

The stolen and recovered Jaguar — image credit: BBC News

When London police wouldn’t recover a stolen car despite an AirTag giving its location, the owners say they tracked it down and stole it back for themselves.

The couple in London were lucky in so many ways, starting with how their car was nine minutes away — when previously stolen vehicles have surfaced across the globe. But according to BBC News, they were also unlucky in the response they got from the Metropolitan Police.

When Mia Forbes Pirie and husband Mark Simpson of Hammersmith, found that their $57,000 Jaguar E-Pace care was gone, they called the police. Reportedly, they got only what they described as a “vague” response about maybe sending a patrol car out, and probably telling them if they ever found anything.

It did not seem to make a difference that the car had an AirTag in it and so Forbes Pirie was able to tell police exactly where it was. Consequently, the couple decided to go get the car back themselves.

“I wanted to act quite quickly as my fear was that we would find the AirTag and not the car when it was discarded on to the street without the car,” said Forbes Pirie, “so I told them that we were planning to head to the location.”

Reportedly, the police response was that the couple should call them again if they needed assistance at the scene.

“It felt like a bit of an adventure, it was exciting, a little bit of a fun thing to do, to see if we could find our car,” continued Forbes Pirie. “I didn’t really think car thieves would hurt us, more that they would try to get away.”

It’s not clear why the couple thought tracking down the thieves was a safe move, but they found the car parked in Chiswick with no sign of the thieves.

Those thieves had managed to bypass the immobilizer that came with the car. They were ultimately only thwarted because the couple had installed their own, second immobilizer.

The couple describe what they did as having had to steal the car back, because ironically, they were unable to just start it and drive off — because of the same immobilizer. They had to contact the car company and prove ownership, before it was unlocked for them.

“I think I thought the police would act quicker considering they had a location for it, but I know they also very stretched,” concluded Forbes Pirie.

It’s now common to find that car owners have added AirTags to their vehicles, and consequently been able to find where they were taken to. But for personal safety reasons Apple, AppleInsider, and many law enforcement agencies — except, seemingly, London’s Metropolitan Police — strongly advise against it.

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