How to lift finger prints Urr... Ok, this morning around 11:00am, somebody broke into my car & stole my cellphone. When I went to the police station to report this incident, the lady at the reception did not seem too excited, she asked me to fill in a form & leave my contact information. When I went back to my car, I noticed some very visible finger prints & palm prints, so I asked the reception lady if somebody wanted to take those prints, she said "NO", then told me to go home to wait for somebody to contact me regarding this. I went home & waited, 6 hours later, a police officer called, I told him the whole thing all over again. When I said there are finger prints on the window, he sounded really surprised nobody at the station took the evidence. When I offered to drive back to the station, he promptly declined & saying it's too late. The end of the story is: police is not going to follow up on this incident. I understand they might be too busy to deal with such trivial matters, but is there anyway I can locate my phone? I have my contact list on the phone, it's a Sprint Samsung N-400. Only got it a month ago. Thanx in advance
I do not understand why they would not take the fingerprints. I think you should officially complain about the lady who refused to pursue this. Also, why would the police officer say it is too late, if the finger prints are still there. I would complain about that as well. I think it is their job. Yes, there might be worse crimes out there, but that sounds like an unacceptable lackluster attitude.
Call it up and tell the guy who stole it that you would like your phone back. Both of y'all will laugh and laugh. And he'll keep your phone.
I say we call Matlock... He'll find the culprit... Its probably that evil Gavin McCloud or George Goober Lindsey.
ur, bummer, couldn't edit the title of my post. Thanx for the advice guys. At the end of my conversation with that police officer, I asked him: " So this means the person who stole my phone gets away with it?" "yes. Basically it's very hard to prove he's the person who commited the crime." I have contacted SPRINT to suspend the phone number, they were equally powerless to do anything. I asked the customer service rep if any phone calls' been made. She found a phone number but couldn't disclose it due to regulation, has to wait for 3 days or get a court subpeonen. I don't know if this funny or ironic. Who says crime doesn't pay?
Something similar happened to me when I first moved down here. My car was stolen and recovered and I found mail that belonged to whoever took my car under the passenger seat. I put the envelopes in a ziplock because thats what I thought you did with evidence, and I called the cops and told them I had the smoking gun to catch the crook. The cop said "you got your car back, most people don't. just be glad you can still drive it". oomp
Lisa: Grandpa, Matlock isn't real Grandpa: Neither are my teeth, but I can still eat corn on the cob...if you scrape it off any mash it into a fine paste...now that's good eatin'!! Best....................Simpsons..................Episode..................Ever...........Nothing like derailing a thread with a well timed Simpsons quote
I live in Fremont, California. This area has always been thought to be relatively safe, perhaps this is why police are so lenient to criminals
If all you lost was a cell phone, you shouldn't feel too bad. Fremont is a pretty nice area once you get past the high cost of living.
Each and every cellphone out there transmits its electronic serial number (ESN) at all times when it is on. When someone's phone is stolen, Sprint's suppose to suspend the account and blacklist the ESN as a "stolen phone". Thus, the thief can't use your account nor can he reprogram it as his own. All he's left with is an expensive paperweight. Oh yea, if Sprint wanted to bother they could track the phone but there's no way they'd want to go through with that just because its time consuming. So I'd try and get Sprint to verify that they recorded the phone as stolen and take solace in the fact that the thief got nothing for his trouble.
I had a friend whose apartment was burglarized. The cops came over but wouldn't check for fingerprints. They said that they can't get good fingerprints off of most things anyway. But really, it won't do much good. If all they have is a palm print on the exterior of your car, they can't get a warrant for that. So why bother? Besides that, how much in resources should they use to collect evidence on a petty crime when they don't even have the suspect in hand?
I didn't know that...my phone got stolen in Spain a while ago. So I could contact the Spanish phone company and they could notice when someone is using that phone?!
Warren, thanx for the info. It's not so much of the equipment but the loss of security and hassle of re-entering friends' phone numbers again; as well as the nonchalant attitude of police. My case might be a bit extreme, the buglar left 10 greasy finger prints AND palm prints, I can see those with my naked eyes. I don't know, but I do feel there is something amiss in the police procedures.
This is normal procedure. Twice our car was broken into in our driveway (in addition to 2 cars being stolen out of our driveway) when we lived in Houston. In each case they did not take fingerprints because they could not prove if that was the person who actually broke into the car. Anyone walking by a car can touch it. Recently my wife's purse was stolen along with her cell phone at, of all places, St. Paul's Cathedral in Minnesota. Our new phone (from Sprint) has some sort of GPS on it that can supposedly locate it, but I am unsure if the actual service to do so is available yet.
I'm a college student and I worked at Radioshack for the summer, we had stolen phones all the time. Our store phone, a Sanyo 5300 (nice $300 camera phone) was stolen last month. Too bad my lazy ass manager and Sprint rep didn't feel like tracking them... Olliez, in your case, sad to say, but most of the people who work in the cellular business dont wanna give a rat's ass unless there's a new activation involved. Incentive based pay can really screw over customer service. Still, the police should have done something at least. That's definitely cause for complaint.
