Police used Tracking Devices on Parents
Father later took cops to boy’s body in remote wetlandMarch 23, 2006
BY JACK KRESNAK
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITERNearly one month after their adopted son Ricky disappeared, police secretly placed tracking devices on Lisa and Tim Holland’s vehicles, the lead detective in the case said Wednesday.Authorities planted the devices Aug. 1 on Tim Holland’s Chevrolet S-10 pickup and Lisa’s white minivan, Ingham County Sheriff’s Detective Roy Holliday testified during the preliminary examination for the Hollands, who each are charged with murder and first-degree child abuse…
Full, sad story here:..
..I’m posting this sad story as a reminder and encouragement to police and prosecutors out there to keep GPS tracking in mind. There’s still a lot of pushback in a lot of jurisdictions regarding use of GPS tracking, especially in the case of these sad, difficult missing child cases where there’s significant reasons to suspect one or both parents but no hard evidence.
In the case referenced here the GPS didn’t actually solve the case, the father led the police to his son’s body apparently due to good old fashioned police investigation and interrogation efforts. But the fact that the law enforcement community used the GPS trackers proves that they were doing their job in the best way they knew how and exerting every effort to find the missing boy.
You can find a number of recent cases where the use of tracking on a suspect’s car did lead to the solving of the crime. Successful police work involves a variety of techniques and dogged determination. Kudos to those here who did their job and did it successfully, and kudos for not listening to the hue and cry of overzealous privacy advocates who some how pervert the concept of privacy into the protection of child murderers.
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