About

Stand alone security leaves people vulnerable.
Its time to break free from being isolated and alone.

We help property owners increase their safety levels 10 times higher by using a matrix of systems. As that matrix grows in a community, crime drops. People enjoy a safer place to live, work, and drive.

Darren Boyer
Founder-CEO

My name is Darren Boyer, CEO of Lightcatch.

I had owned an IT company for 10 years and sometimes our customers would urgently ask to get their cameras up and working after a theft. We didn’t support these systems, but we dealt enough of with these requests that the staff began to feel like that there was an opportunity there.

Then one day, an idea struck ...“

Since everyone carried a mobile phone around in their pocket, why don’t we show the people nearby what is happening?

Why don’t we enable people to provide updates using the mapping features on their mobile phone?

If we did that, then the police would know exactly where to go!“

Based on this premise, I decided to create the free Lightcatch app.

It seemed so clear that once people seen how well this technology worked they would never go back to the old way of doing things.

Less than 1 year after we started, we were getting 41% of the stolen items recovered through the app. Sometimes it was less than 3 minutes after the stolen item was found and the police recovered it.

Then one day I got a call from Tom, a member of our Advisory Board. Tom was a 25 year veteran of the Calgary Police Service. He observed that while the app was performing well, it was falling short of its true potential. The problem was, everyone reported in different ways. While some victims had great pictures, others had none. Some would be very emotional and write a long description while others would put in nothing. In many cases, it was even hard to figure out what the creator wanted.

How people were using the app was actually hurting the victims that really needed the most help. Tom wanted us to make everyone's alerts the same, at our own expense. "Put the information the way the police would want to see it," he advised. And then he showed us how to do that.

Over the next few months, the app’s success rate jumped from 41% to as much as 80% of all stolen items being recovered!

Enforcement services across different regions got really excited and started to recommend the Lightcatch app to the communities that they served. More and more Rural Crime Watch groups were recommending the app to their members. A few police detachments even began recommending that every new member get the app.

While this all seemed so good, there were still some big problems I kept seeing over and over again

99% of crimes had no clear video of the suspect and the crime

93% of thefts were being reported over 1 hour late.

I couldn’t quite put my finger on why these reporting stats looked so bad. It was happening all over, in cities and in rural areas.

Slowly A Path Forward Grew Brighter

The majority of victims thought their method of home security was ‘good enough’. Yet the data showed that the security systems they thought were helping them, were actually helping the criminals.

Homeowners often go years between property crime problems, so having the needed response at the time it is needed is simply unrealistic.

In fact, this problem has gotten so big it is kind of surprising how it just snuck up on everyone.

Instead of being afraid of the police, doorbell cameras, Facebook, and other apps like Next Door the criminals just don’t care.

The problem hindering the police from making an instant arrest is almost always the same.

The reporting of the event is too slow, the quality of the proof, and the quality of the reporting is too poor. Everything is isolated and because it is isolated it often works in an unhealthy way.

The scars these kinds of crime can leave behind to the victims can run really deep. Sometimes the impact lasts well over 10 years, even if no one was hurt.

Despite the explosion in smartphones and great cameras the sickening pattern of theft has barely changed. Stand alone security leaves people vulnerable, isolated and alone.

This has become a mission to help people learn what really allows people to break free.

With your help, we can change the world together where everyone enjoys a safer place to live, work and drive.

Darren