About

Enjoy life. Worry free.

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 hit us with requests 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 to do this direction.

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 was so clear, the world would never go back to the old way of doing things, once they seen how well this technology worked.

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.

Take the case of a homeowner buying an AI powered camera. They will get alerts to their mobile phone only if a human or vehicle enter the sight of that camera.

Those alerts will compete and sound like all the other alerts coming in to their phone such as a texts, apps and email.

Since most property crimes take less than 10 minutes, and crime happens 24 hours per day, it becomes impossible for the majority of people to see every meaningful notice from that camera day and night. It isn't the camera, it's the people that can't, move fast enough to stop a crime on their property with this kind of a system.

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. Every morning in NY City alone, the police wake up, trying to catch the bad guys. And every morning, these same thieves go out and steal another 90,000 packages.

This happens on a daily basis.

Instead of being afraid of the police, doorbell cameras, Facebook, and other apps like Next Door the criminals just don’t care. They get up and they steal another 90,000 packages.

There is not just the 389,000 package thefts in America every day. There are also the vehicle thefts, catalytic convertor thefts, fuel thefts, holiday trailer thefts, ATV thefts, bicycle thefts, thefts of items from inside your garage, plus thefts from criminals breaking into homes and businesses.

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.

Most think this is the police and justice system breaking down but that isn't the case.

The USA and Canada have different laws, different police forces, and, none of that seems to matter.

Many of these crimes are committed by desperate addicts, which means that they are not sophisticated. They are just desperate people who are willing to try anything.

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.

What started out as an app has become a mission to help people learn what really changes the safety level of their property. I hope you can get the benefit of this these break through lessons.

Maybe, one person at a time we can change the world together.

Darren