Stolen car retrieval

[00:00:00] Speaker A: You're tuned into the all New Freedom Formal 6.5. Formal 6.5. [00:00:08] Speaker B: Good morning Trinidad and Tobago. 25 after the hour of 8 o'. [00:00:11] Speaker C: Clock. [00:00:11] Speaker B: Good morning going out to Dirk Barnes of the Air Support Tactical Team. And good morning. Welcome to the Rumble. I do apologize for the NPTA speaks. We do have a preemptive program as he would return with us next week, Wednesday as usual. There were some other commitments that he had to attend to. So good morning to you, Mr. Barnes, and welcome back to Freedom. [00:00:32] Speaker A: Good morning, good morning, good morning. And again, I do apologize, all your listeners for coming out of this hour, but we had an emergency this morning that we were dealing with and sometimes these things have us in that response mode. [00:00:45] Speaker B: Well, here it is now, I, I rail fast, you know, so unless there's something personal. What is the emergency I had this morning? [00:00:54] Speaker A: Well, we're involved in stolen vehicles. So we recover solar vehicles. Wow. Two calls this morning. Can't go into the specifics just yet because it is still something that the TTPS is engaging with. So we are providing assistance as much as we can. So that's what's happening right now. [00:01:12] Speaker B: Wonderful. [00:01:13] Speaker A: But on the other hand, I mean, I wanted to take this opportunity to tell you about something that happened recently. And I don't know if you might indulge me. [00:01:22] Speaker B: Of course. [00:01:23] Speaker A: So Sunday and I really want to kind of raise some of the awareness with persons. So on Sunday there was an instance where we had a vehicle that was reported stolen Sunday morning. And we deployed our teams. It took them just around five minutes to recover the vehicle. Now when you hear companies come out and they say that, you know, the sent out a recovery team and all these different things, what you'll find happening is that these companies will be calling the police. They call the police. The police would, would take the information they would put them on to an officer who is driving in one of the patrol vehicles and the company will be talking directly with that particular police officer in the vehicle. So police are patrols all over the country. So when they do arrive on the vehicle, those companies would say, or other GPS companies would say, listen, we recover the car in 10 minutes or 15 minutes or 20 minutes. When I say we do recovery is because my officers, people from my company who are employed on the company, they arrive on location and that's the time I count. So that's what I mean. I give true recovery time. So we got there in about five minutes. When we got there, which was, you know, this is a story I want to tell. We stayed on that location covering, of course, our own personal safety and making sure that we keep an eye on the customer's vehicle until the police arrive. Now, the reason why the translation, police service must be involved in every single recovery. [00:02:50] Speaker B: Before you go forward, I want some clarity. One texter says, we kind of lost a scene. Okay, So I want a little clarity. An incident happened and you mentioned about true time. And when you count your recovery, I think we missed that point. You kind of passed it. So let's go back there. [00:03:06] Speaker A: Yeah, I like to, I like to be clear with statistics on timings. So with our company, our recovery starts from when our officers, people carry air support tactical weapons and air support tactical precept badges and all these things. When they arrive on a location and they get eyes on vehicle, that's when [00:03:23] Speaker B: you start to count your time. [00:03:25] Speaker A: That's when we say the car was recovered in that time. From the time they leave my office to the time they arrive at that particular vehicle, that is our recovery time. [00:03:34] Speaker B: So an incident happened where a vehicle was reported stolen. The officers left the office and arrived. They found the vehicle. This is important. They was able to. They found it. So they have eyes on it. So they're seeing it parked or wherever it is, they're seeing it. I'm giving persons ball by ball. And they didn't approach the vehicle. This is. They stood around, they stood nearby keeping a track on it, but they didn't approach. Am I correct? [00:04:01] Speaker C: Good. [00:04:01] Speaker A: Correct. Because this is how our tactics work. We get eyes on vehicle and have teams on location. Now they will approach the vehicle at some point in time. But the first thing after they have eyes on vehicle, the first part of their operation is their personal safety. Secure the area. So they secure the area. And we, because we use drones now, we also deploy a drone into the area. So it's not just the recovery teams that will also be going, the actual security officers. It could be half mile to two miles away. Another team of people would go and they would deploy their drone. Or the drone might come from one of the dock boxes that we have stationed. And once the drone gets overhead and provides that overhead view, the officers in the vehicle, they, on their tablets, they see what the drone is seeing. So they don't have to fly a drone themselves. They're getting a live view of themselves and everything that's happening around them. So that operation on Sunday took five minutes. The situation that went on on Sunday, however, is that this would have happened in El Socorro. So this is Barataria. The Barataria responsibility for the police, they had a number of operations going on. Task force had an operation. From what I was told there was a suspected murder in the area, that resources had to be diverted. It took officers from the police service after they were called by the client, not the, the clients would have made a report to the Toronto Bago Police Service. I'm not too sure if it's before us or after us, but they would have made that report within the same couple of minutes that we got the report. It took the police two hours to have resources sent to where that vehicle was. Now, I would have done a live video from the location and I spoke about it. And I want to make sure that I say to people who are listening to this show right now, this is not, I am not complaining about the Translago Police Service. I am not saying that the police service, you know, not effective or whatever. What I am saying to people is that the Transbago Police Service do not, say again, do not have unlimited resources. As much as we might hear. They have 7,000 police officers, nine divisions and 10 divisions or how many police stations. These Officers don't work 24 hours a day. They ought not to, or they definitely don't work 24, 7. They do go home. So they have to work on rotation and shifts. So when you're working on rotation and shifts and then you have specialized units that also absorbing a lot of the manpower of the Torontobago Police Service, it is fair to assume that the police officers in the stations are not going to be in abundance. So as such, when something like this, like what happened on Sunday happens, things like robbery, murder, you know, or operation for narcotics and silver neck warrants and stuff will trump a stolen vehicle that has been recovered by a private agency. It will trumpet. So your car could be parked up in a location for an exorbitant amount of time without anybody's eyes on anybody from the Chandrabago Police Service. When you make a report to Chandrabago Police Service because it'll really depend on what resources are available. And I've been saying this all the time. [00:07:11] Speaker B: The police took the two hours they arrived. I kind of just curious here, you all recovered the vehicle intact, I would imagine. Was anyone arrested while the two hours, while you all were keeping eyes on the vehicle, did the assailants attempt to move it? Did you all have to relocate while the vehicle was in motion? Or is it that they stole it? They went to this particular area, they, they packed it up and I don't know, I'm just asking, right? [00:07:40] Speaker A: So I'm glad you asked that question, because I will also answer another question that people ask quite often, why we don't do a thing operation. So let me answer the first question. So what normally happens is that the car thieves especially would steal a vehicle, take it a location, and just park it up and then they leave it there. Now, in the realm of car thieves, let me tell you how some of them operate. And this is based on interviewing people who were involved in theft hunting before. When they steal a vehicle, sometimes the car thief himself may not actually go back for that vehicle. What he might do now is to go to his network or within his network and they send messages and they can say, I have in this particular case, a silver T and send a picture. And people in there will come and say, are we interested? They organize to pay him money. And sometimes it might not be money. It might be phone card credits. It could be all kinds of different things. And it's not no big money either. We're talking about maybe a thousand, fifteen, two thousand dollars. And only when he receives that money, he sends the location for where that vehicle is. So the car team themselves do ever come back to the vehicle in some cases. Now, a lot of people, so that is why we would have found that vehicle, park up there. Now, we don't just run up on the vehicle and stand by the vehicle, and the whole neighborhood know that, hey, this is a stolen vehicle. And we here, what we tend to do in our operations is that we will come to the area, get eyes on, sometimes might just do a drive pass to confirm, and we go somewhere else out of sight and out of mind while the drone keeps an eye on it until the arrival of the trans people. Police service. Now, why are we doing that is in case anybody should come back and come to the vehicle and do anything with the vehicle. We are picking up surveillance on them and they are unaware. Now, some people would think, well, they could just look up in the sky and say, drew, not our drones. Our drones could be coast a mile away and zoom in and be able to read the logo on a pen that might be in your top pocket. That's how good it is. You wouldn't hear, see it, or even know it's there. So looking up and trying to find it is not going to work. And the officers themselves could be located, you know, a block away, two blocks away, out of sight and out of line. You wouldn't even know that they're in the area. So this is why the operations may not necessarily put us right on the vehicle standard by the vehicle, there's nothing much to do. But in this particular case, our officers kept eyes on it when police arrived. Their job is to start to look at the chain of the chain of custody, taking possession of it, making sure that when it goes on the record, they could go through the whole process. Because remember, if this goes towards any kind of prosecution or anything like that, all of this is now evidence. The vehicle and everything that happened with the vehicle and how it was found is now evidence. So when the wrecker takes it and it starts to move and is gone, the police at court, it is then fingerprinted, photographed, and all these different things that is done by the police that's not done by a private agency. So our job really and truly is location, making sure that we have the vehicle recovered because we have that responsibility. Now let's go to the sting operation question. Because I've seen a lot of people ask that question. I like to put this part to [00:10:36] Speaker B: rest before you get to this thing. Operation question. Let's take this call quickly. The lines are open. Hello, Good morning. [00:10:44] Speaker C: This man talking really good since, you know. Yes, watching. Yeah, that's why I still feel I. [00:10:54] Speaker B: We'll get to that part. We'll get to that part. But yeah, that's why I asked. Hold on. [00:11:00] Speaker A: If you want, you can keep the call. [00:11:01] Speaker B: No, we have our next one. Good morning. [00:11:04] Speaker C: Good. This gentleman, we had put him. The commissioner police voice. We have to put his ma. The commissioner police to control. We need j. We need technology in this country to handle that. We should post our commerce on our coastline all community. And we should put our headquarters here. My headquarters. By me. I am today because I want to be the commissioner, you know, I, I know what going on this place, you know, to handle it, you know. Yeah, yeah. We need drones. We need drones. Good topic. [00:11:36] Speaker B: I, I thank you. Hello, good morning. 625-2257 and 6273223. I'm seeing a call coming through, but yeah, that's why I pause with Dirk and I ask him to go through because I started to see through the lens of watching a movie with this situation that happened recently unfolding. Hello. Good morning. [00:11:57] Speaker C: Boy, you should be a police officer. Mickey and Allen, the sergeant. See you. [00:12:03] Speaker B: Hello. Good morning. [00:12:05] Speaker C: Good topic and good program. This guy who you have there, he was an ex police officer or something? [00:12:12] Speaker B: Well, ex military. [00:12:14] Speaker C: Ex military. So you see, he has a lot of experience. [00:12:17] Speaker B: Yes, he does. [00:12:18] Speaker C: Yeah. These are the kind of people we need in this country to, to head Certain departments to cut these thieves and all these bandits and and so on in this country. Boy, I don't know, I don't know why when these guys go into private, how I should say private business that they could get the job done and the police officers and the others who are in national security cannot get the job done. It's really, really surprising to me. All right, thank you sir. [00:12:50] Speaker B: Well that for me Dirk, is a very, is a no brainer. In your private practice you are responsible and answer to yourself or your company crew when it comes to government. You answer into the country. You're talking about taxpayers money, talking about procurement procedures, you're talking about trying to bring in these drones, setting up and it's cumbersome and buretic and a lot of red tape and it's a whole dynamic that takes place not to mention who benefiting, who's supposed to get. It's a series of things that go down as opposed to Dirkbands and the air support tactical who are able to bring in this infrastructure, this hardware through customs and through the right channels. But I am curious. He was talking about the sting operation. Thank you for the call sir. 625-2257 and 6273223. And he's made up quite nicely for his tardiness this morning I must say because you, you paint a nice picture. So let's get to these things part. [00:13:48] Speaker A: Right, so first I might show a quick one here. So the customer who, who said, you know, that I should look at becoming the commissioner of police. Sorry, I'm, I have my eyes on that, on that chair as well. I'm well, I'm well qualified. I have waiting for the next time they, they put it out to advertise and I will, I will definitely apply, you have my assurance. But let's move on. So the swing, one of the things that we see that happen a lot of times and I want to kind of put this into perspective as to who we are and what we do. We are a supplemental police agency, a protective service agency. So I'm a private agency. As a private agency, the bill for officers and the persons who are responding, that is my bill. I pay that, not the taxpayers. So that comes from company profits and all these different things. So these people are salaried and all these all. So I want you to have that, have that mindful. Now as I mentioned a while ago a vehicle could be left in a place gathering dust. The next time that vehicle moves from there that somebody comes for it could be when the car t finally get our vehicle to say, well, okay, nobody coming for it. Could be three weeks, it could be two months. It could be any, any period of time before somebody comes back for that vehicle. So keep that in mind also, and this is the most important part. I am contracted as in the person who owns that vehicle, the reason why it's recovered. I am contracted by the owner of that vehicle prior to being stolen that if at any point in time it is stolen, I am to recover that vehicle in the shortest time possible and return it to its rightful owner in the shortest time possible. I cannot take it upon myself to say, let's keep an eye on it to see what happens. And I would like to paint certain scenarios which have played out already in the realm of stolen vehicles, where in some cases, some vehicles have been destroyed because people realize, like, somebody must see it and they just decide to torch the vehicle. Now, if it is the torture vehicle, while I already had eyes on it, I could be held responsible for the loss of that vehicle because, as I said, I am contracted to recover that vehicle and to return to the customer in its shortest time possible. So I cannot take it upon myself to do any kind of sting operation with a customer's vehicle. Now, I also want you to remember, not everybody who listen might say, well, I would like give you permission. It sounds that easy. But when you have a single mother who has two children to drop at one a daycare and one school and she has to go to work, right, and she needs a vehicle, it is not a situation where I could tell her, well, we will hold on to the vehicle in that spot for two, three weeks and see if anybody come back for it with the hope that we catch them, right? I can't give that kind of conversation because I don't know, as I just mentioned a while ago, when the car teams or anybody for that matter, is going to return to that location of that vehicle to take possession of the vehicle, the police says no. And we have seen scenarios already where cars park up for days, weeks, months sometimes, police are driving and passing a vehicle up and down. And then somebody realized, let me check this vehicle, this vehicle park up here for a while now, only to realize that vehicle was a stolen vehicle that was stolen the year before. So these things do happen in the stolen vehicle industry. And that part is not communicated to people what, what they think is, what they see on TV in terms of, you know, these action movies and seeing operations and believe a sting operation will render immediate results. It doesn't. And there are People who paid for those vehicles who want it back. [00:17:17] Speaker B: All right. I was thinking also, but let me take this call. Good morning. [00:17:21] Speaker C: So David, the allergy commissioner again there's two ways, two factors that a vehicle could be removed with owner consent or without owner consent. And anytime with owner consent his which is the ledge commissioner he know has to retrieve that and return it to owner one time. All right. [00:17:44] Speaker B: I was thinking Dick is we set them up. I noticed this was something I saw in a series. Again, it's just, I wouldn't say TV theatrics, but it's something I saw some a while back where they created a sting operation to catch car thieves in the US I think it was in la, Texas and some other way, some other place where they would actually park the car in the car park they would have eyes on it. And I mean a car thief is anyone who goes into a vehicle and attempts or drives it away without the permission of the owner. You are committing motor vehicle larceny. So in order to catch thieves that they're saying that have a high concentration of car thieves in this area, the person park up the vehicle and pretends to be absent minded. Probably leave the key in the ignition, going into the supermarket quickly to pass up to buy something with eyes around. And as soon as somebody or the supposed car thieves sees the opportunity because they're creating it for them, because the idea is to catch them to stop them from further inconvenience in law abiding citizens. The police as they attempt to drive off sirens Come on private cars, you're seeing unmarked vehicles and persons are apprehended. So I was, I mean I was wondering if we have that type of resources in Trinidad where we really want to catch these thieves. So let's give them the opportunity to steal something that doesn't belong to them. Because even if you say, well you're setting me up, you're putting a car for me to thief, even if we put the car door thief, it, it's not yours. And as you go for it, we can at least apprehend one and get you off the streets. That is the kind of sting I was thinking about. Not with people real car as you mentioned, who needs their vehicle back. Your thoughts on that part of it? [00:19:35] Speaker A: Well, and I'm seeing this from the point of if I was a police officer or if I was senior in the police service, right? Because at the end of the day I am not a police officer and I can't, I wouldn't undertake to do it with a private company because there's no benefit of it to our company other than putting out resources. And these resources are not going to have any implication or any influence with my customers. Right. So let's look at it from the public side of things. So remember guys, I am not a police officer currently and I am speaking as though I was a police officer. I would not undertake that type of operation. The benefits I could get from putting out something like that is going to be small, very, very small wins, if any at all. Because you will have to. You also have to remember the dynamic of the type of theft and type of crime we see here. There are crimes of opportunity. They are premeditative. I'm talking about specifically motor vehicle larceny and robbery. And because of those things, you, you will have to actually put out somebody driving around with a vehicle to look as though they are a target. So on the chance that they might be robbed for their vehicle and even then, what happens next, they go to the courts, the person get bailed, they back out doing the same thing. You could be putting all the same set of responses, the same people just for robbery, catching the same people right through on the other side with larceny, these guys with. Lastly, I remember I mentioned last week it's a cat and mouse game. They, they adapt. So if they realize that they get catching a sting operation today, they will adapt. And that's thing operational efforts by only net one person out of the four or five different gangs that are operating specifically for stolen vehicles. I would have gone a different route. And maybe the current commissioner might hear this and he might decide to take a little page out of my book. I would have gone the way of partnerships with all of the GPS companies, learn more about the data that they have because they are the ones who have been involved in the this whole process. Learn what they're doing, provide some additional support, open up some lines where you know, certain special units would lay us directly with these companies. And once you do that, you would start to see so much more information that might help you guide where your operation should be, even speed it up. One of the key things we have been saying for a long time and they notice in the police service is that vehicles are being stolen between 1am to 4am in the morning. You wake up your car missing. GPS companies are able to track these kind of things and see when that is happening. But in their particular case, some of the GPS companies, they can't investigate themselves because they have no resources. Here at Air Support Tactical, the amount of times I have sent Officers out on a hunch that has turned into recovering a stolen vehicle where when people get up in the morning they realize they come in. By the time they call us and say yes, we noticed your car was moved last night. We were trying to call you, you did not answer. We recovered your car. Your car is at Station X. That is something that currently happens. [00:22:31] Speaker B: Wow. [00:22:31] Speaker A: But other GPS companies cannot do that because if they pick up the phone and call, say we've seen our vehicle moving to o' clock in the morning, we're not sure, can you check it out? The police will say if you're not reporting it, that's already taking anything, hang up the phone. And some of the people who operate on the 999, some of them railroad I could tell you because I dealt with them myself, you know. So people have to understand that well the police service should have to understand that there's so much more data that exists because the technology exists outside of the police service and if they integrate with that they might have a lot more data, a lot more information that they can work with. Even when a car is stolen sometimes, you know, sometimes them car teams those triple days drive and go home first before they go and park it up somewhere to cool down, you know then I mean I've said this before so if people say that don't tell the cartoons don't do that. They have stuff for some time but some of them the absent mindedness do that. That information is being stored on a server that could be presented to the police service. But I, I just find myself sometimes after we recover a stolen vehicle to beg the police service to give me a contact so I could send the journey report. And sometimes they see people from the CIA don't even contact me for a couple of years on asking for a journey report our company. So yes there are deficiencies inside the police service when it comes after the recovery. [00:23:44] Speaker C: Hello, good morning, morning DVD scenario you was talking about is base car that is baby car with that's correct devices and, and all sorts of stuff. But they didn't even have an automatic lock off where the police officers can lock off the fuel to the car. So as soon as the person drives off that is a felony. So the guy catch one time. But I think that is a real good initiative. I don't know if the police service had the resources to do that on here but it's what I try. But I would like to know the gentle adjust tune in. And I would like to know the gentleman's company's name. I Listen, listen off your. Thanks. [00:24:25] Speaker B: All right. Is air support tactical. But he said something that I sure plenty of you all missed. This is not the first time Dirk has said it. It has happened before. Dirk said we have data, we have patterns, algorithms, which simply means we are aware of this customer's movements. This customer moves during the day, goes to work, comes home. But by the time the customer gets home, it's zero to nil chance to 1% chance the customer would be out at 2am so if Dirk sees that car because they are monitoring 24 hours. Dirk is listening from air support tactical and can correct if they are moving. And Dirk said it just now and I'm sure you all missed this very, very important piece of information. He's now looking the sky is moving this customer based on track record and history. They don't function these hours. Let's call the customer. Maybe it's a hospital run car. Get the customer. The customer is not answering. Okay? Immediately they start mobilizing to track and follow this car. And that's the part all you're missing. That is the part of data that could be lent or not lent, but given to the police officer so they can track this in real time. Dirk, I would leave you to continue there because I know people miss that part where you just say because it passed over the head. But I heard it. [00:25:57] Speaker A: And that's another thing because again now everybody who's listening understand that I am a private agency and I do have competition. So I analyze my competition to see what their value is and I make sure I have more value than my competition. But one of the key things that GPS company things that people think is a standard thing, people think this is the basis of what a company should have is monitoring. And what people don't know is that when people, when these companies say that the monitoring, the lie is somebody who have a cell phone in some cases, in fact not all that, but some of them is just a cell phone. And when you call that number, you waking up somebody who will then take charge from in front of a laptop, call the police and make reports. And that is monitoring for them. That's not monitoring for us. Monitoring for us is those same patterns that you spoke of. Because those patterns are important information for us. When a customer parks up their car every day, they work in Monday to Friday and they park up the car at 6, 7, 8 o' clock in the night. They can't move until 6 o' clock next morning. And also the plane blue. The car starts up on an average Tuesday at 1:00pm, 1:00am and start driving. That's of a concern. Then we notice this car driving hard and it bringing up our risk for us because according to the history of that vehicle, that vehicle does not drive that fast all the time. So somebody else is either urgent or somebody is else is driving the vehicle because the owner doesn't drive like that. When we pull up the profile on the customer, we realize the customer might be a 60 year old or something like that. It's not adding up in terms of what we see. The person might be living city, but now the vehicle going up somewhere in the back of Chumakok, you know. [00:27:32] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, we're just talking, right? [00:27:33] Speaker A: It's just out of the ordinary or sea lots or something out of the ordinary that raises, you know, things for us and other GPS companies could see this. If they're operating at night as 24 hours as they claim they are when we see it, I have two choices at that point in time we could either say listen, let's launch or let's observe. When we observe, I mean if something goes into Tumaca or what we move in, we start in pre position, we get any drone up, we put in eyes on that. You know, because we wouldn't drive into that area just so. Because you know those areas are controlled by particular gangs and things. So we want to know exactly what is happening before we go there. And once we realize hey, this is actually a stolen vehicle, all arms will come down. Because now we call in ttps, we call in people, task force, we call people and we go inside there. Now our company with some additional teams. So it's not just one team going in, but it might be two or three teams. So we have numbers when we go inside here, when we go in there, we go in there with one purpose, secure that vehicle for HTTPs to take it. We have done that in the past. We have had a customer, you know, and not only that, we have actually intercepted and arrested people because of operations like that before. Because that was the key thing I wanted the point I missed a while ago that when this is happening in real time, the car teams don't know we come in. They will assume that something might become but they don't know and they don't even have a GPS yet. It's only until they reach and they started checking. So there's a chance that an interception can take place. And everything that you were talking about a while ago with catching somebody and all that kind of stuff that could happen almost every single day. Because almost every single day. If you check it cars are being stolen with GPS tracking devices every single day two and three a night. So there are chances where every TTPS was actually working with the GPS companies and these GPS companies will be truthful that and operate 24 hours a day instead of shutting down at 6 o' clock and coming back at 8 o' clock next morning much more a success would actually take place. But currently I could probably name about two or three companies that operate 24 hours a day with that level of monitoring. [00:29:36] Speaker B: Dirk, I thank you. We out of time but next Wednesday we'll be back. I look forward to another exciting story. Not that I want people kind of get stolen, but I'm sure he has a lot of stories in his arsenal. Dirk Barnes of Air Support Tactical. Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts this morning and we'll catch up again next week. Godspay alive. Have a good one buddy and be safe to you and your officers. Nice. [00:29:59] Speaker A: You're tuned into the all new freedom 106.5 106.5.