Keep thefts visible to the public and the police 

Dec 15, 2020, 7am, this car was stolen. By Dec 23 it was recovered. It should have been recovered much sooner than the 8 days it took.

This incident was marked recovered Dec 17, two days after the first alert. It looked like it was the second recovery in Red Deer between midnight and 6am that day. 

Next, the owner patiently waited 5 days for someone to get his vehicle back. When we realized our mistake, and that it wasn't actually found Dec 17, it was recovered within 24 hours.  Thanks RCMP in Red Deer! 
Lessons for Crime Prevention

Make your alert as clear and professional as possible. Take the time to do it right, even if you get something simple out quickly, like this owner did. He first posted a picture of a car and said there was some kind of a decal on it. I updated the alert and said show us what the decal looks like. Find something on the internet if you have to, but the decal is important to see quickly that this is your stolen car. The owner did this 5 minutes later.

Little details like this help the public AND help the police. A 911 operator may not have the time to ask if there are any decals on your 2019 Chev Cruze that just got stolen. You're just another white car that went missing that day. So this unique identifying feature may not ever reach the local police force if you do it wrong.

There are never hundreds or thousands of people just out ‘there’ somewhere who are dying to try and figure out what you want, where it took place, and what to look for. They don’t exist. 

 You need to make it easy for people to help or they will move on very quickly.  They may even share your post thinking maybe someone else will figure it all out.  Mentally, they are 'checked out'.

The difference you’ll get in results is way over 200%. Which is like saying do you want to pay an insurance deductible, pay out of pocket or do you want your stuff back? If you do it right you have a much better chance at getting something back.  And the payoff could be hundreds of dollars per hour in saved expenses.

I once worked in a tire shop and I remember something similar. People with clean, well kept vehicles always got their vehicles treated with that extra care when they came in. Vehicles that were dirty and not well kept were treated just a little bit different. The tire shop was very professional. All the staff cared. But when the owner of the vehicle cared about the condition of their vehicle it made us all that much more professional. I think crimes like this are very similar with how the police handle it.

We developed an automated service so property owners would never have to take care of these details themselves. Visit Crime Blocker to see how our technology extracts all this information from video footage you email to Lightcatch.  Perfect alerts can be made in 3 seconds with the right technology.