Seattle Resident Uses Drone to Track Down Stolen Property

A Seattle man is using ingenuity and aviation technology to fight the rampant crime and worsening lawlessness afflicting his home town.

Angry and disgusted after having his car broken into and his trailer stolen, Tony, a 39-year-old husband and father, began seeking means by which to locate his purloined property. His search led him to a Facebook group called PNW [Pacific Northwest] Stolen Cars— a forum in which victims of theft share information pertaining to their stolen property in hopes of recovering it. Tony’s discussions with the group alerted him of an encampment underneath the First Avenue Bridge in Seattle's Georgetown neighborhood—just a few hundred meters north of the BFI, north field-boundary. The area is known as a de facto chop shop where people illegally deconstruct cars for purpose of selling their parts and homeless people use illicit drugs in plain sight.

"It's just a big open piece of land. It's completely taken over with trailers and cars and trash — lots of trash. Absolutely disgusting," Tony said after flying his drone over the area.

Tony has since flown his drone over the area on multiple occasions in search of stolen property. To date, he's helped two people recover stolen vehicles. In the second instance, tony recalls, "It got to be a little hairy. They [car thieves] were driving on the shoulder, then we got into some residential neighborhoods up in Burien, [a Seattle suburb] and they were going really fast and reckless." Tony states the thieves knew they were being monitored, and eventually abandoned the vehicle, which the rightful owners later recovered.

On yet another occasion, thieves in the Georgetown encampment noticed Tony's drone flying overhead and fired on it with a BB pistol. The drone was not damaged.

News sources report Seattle police have been aware of the encampment for months but have been unable to do much about it. The reports are confirmed by Jamie Housen, spokesperson for Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell’s office, who states, “ … over the last several months, the city has received complaints regarding a variety of issues in this area, including encampment obstructions, trash build-up, environmental impact and public safety."

Seattle residents ascribe the unremitting crime to cuts the city council has made in police budgets, and new laws decriminalizing drug use and vagrancy.

FMI: www.reddit.com/r/SeattleWA/comments/uz01w7/seattle_man_uses_drone_to_try_to_help_victims/