The affluent Bay Area city of Atherton, California, which has seen a dramatic rise in home burglaries this year, is using a unique method to catch perpetrators.
The Atherton Police Department recently turned about 50 homes into “bait houses,” where they’re embedding tracking devices into items of property they believe burglars will want to take.
“The idea behind it is once one of these items starts being moved, we will get a notification at the police department, which is going to start our response,” said Atherton police Cmdr. Dan Larsen.
The department will then launch a drone to follow the tracking device. About 50 mounted license-plate readers that have been placed around the small city would be able to detect the getaway vehicle and provide a description, he said.
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