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A Jacksonville, Florida, resident, Monica Friel, lost her iPhone one night last week. Friel remembered leaving her phone in the backseat of a taxi. Trying not to panic, she remembered that she had installed all necessary GPS tracking apps. So, she sat down at the nearest computer and traced her iPhone to a hotel room.

Unsure of what to do next, Friel called her local police department. The response that Friel got from the police officer who answered the phone was less than desirable. Instead of saying that dispatch would send a police officer out to retrieve her phone right away, Friel was told “oh yeah, sorry, that’s too bad.”

After some investigation into the story, press discovered that the Jacksonville P.D. simply doesn’t have the time to chase down iPhone thieves. Whether or not an iPhone is equipped with a GPS tracking device seems to be irrelevant. As one spokesperson for the Jacksonville department stated, the police “simply don’t have the time or the resources to pinpoint where these items are.”

So, what’s a citizen who’s tracking a stolen item to do? Some citizens are taking matters into their own hands. Needless to say, chasing down a thief is dangerous. Yet, it may be the only option that people like Monica Friel have.

The other option is to forget about the stolen device – hard to do when a simple phone can cost more than $500.

Police still warn citizens not to chase thieves, but, for the time being, a stolen electronic device “…isn’t high-priority.”

Article Written by Harriette Halepis