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SWAT Team Raids Innocent Family Over Stolen AirPods Dropped on Their Street
(www.riverfronttimes.com)
this post was submitted on 26 Mar 2024
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Air pods are what, like $200?
Slightly misleading headline - the SWAT team used the "find my" network to locate the airpods, which had been in a car that had been stolen in (they imply) an armed carjacking. The carjackers then drove through the street the Shamilys live on and threw the airpods out the window (again it is implied but not stated that the airpods were found in the street outside the Shamily home where they landed).
So... yeah. Even calling this "circumstantial evidence" is stretching this to the absolute limit. Presumably someone in the family has an apple device on the findmy network, which would show the Shamily home as the location of the airpods (since the device was in the home, but the airpods it was detecting in the vicinity were decidedly not).
Somehow, st. louis' finest didnt stop to think about... well, anything apparently. This is fucking absurd. I hope their lawyers eviscerate the cops over this one.
The truth is they tried to use the AirPods to find the criminals, who I believe also stole a weapon as to justify the SWAT action, so they thought they were at the right place and surely the stuff is just well hidden! And then, when they find the AirPods on the street, they realize that just because the dot looks like it’s in the house, it’s not that accurate. They thought, “If it’s inside the house, then that means this is the bad guys house.” Then they proceeded to break in without observing to see if the car that was jacked is anywhere in sight, if there are children to be aware of, etc. in other words, this SWAT Team was not very bright.
Edit: or didn’t give a fuck.
This is a new twist on a long history of law enforcement misunderstanding and misusing geolocation services.
Just ask the little old lady in Kansas who has 600 million ip addresses in her front yard https://theweek.com/articles/624040/how-internet-mapping-glitch-turned-kansas-farm-into-digital-hell
They already had the charger, it was crashed/ditched soon after it was stolen. They were looking for the guns used in the carjacking, or the airpods case or other items in the vehicle, so they could arrest Shamily and/or Bristoe as accomplices.