The idea was like a lot of other great ideas. When it was conceived, the immediate reaction was: “Why didn’t anyone think of this sooner?”
Lieutenant Travis Martinez still remembers the “light bulb” moment. “GPS was starting to replace dye packs on money in banks,” he recalled. “And I thought, why can’t we do it for burglaries?”1 The idea was to affix an Electronic Satellite Pursuit (ESP) to an item like a laptop computer. In that way, the Redlands, California, Police Department could track the item’s movement—including, potentially, its movement post-theft. Available only to law enforcement, financial institutions, and corporate security teams, the ESP has potential as a stolen item recovery tool, but it had to be tested, first. Officers placed an ESP-equipped computer inside a vehicle and parked it in an area that had lately experienced a rash of vehicle burglaries. It didn’t take long for a bite.
