Sprint Refuses To Reveal Location of GPS Cell Phone in Carjacked SUV

You may recall I wrote about the very issue of this article just a couple days ago:
http://satviz.com/GPS_Blog/?p=48
I predict we are going to see a lot more of this before the year is through.

The gist of today’s story is that a family was getting their kids into the car for a trip and when the husband went back inside to hurry the toddler along and low-life car thief drove off with the car, baby strapped inside.

Frantic the family called 911 and when the sheriff’s department got on the phone the father remembered his Spring GPS-enabled cell phone was in the vehicle with the kidnapped child.

The sheriff’s deputies called Sprint and asked if the phone could be tracked. Sprint replied that they could indeed but they would not because the sheriff did not have a court order instructing them to do so and besides, there was a matter of who was going to pay a $25 service fee.

Luckily for all concerned the missing boy was found 2 ½ hours later by a passer-by. Could you even begin to imagine how long the 2.5 hours was for the frantic family? Or to the helpless deputies, searching in the blind while a lard-ass company bureaucrat had the boy’s location on screen the whole time?

Later a Sprint public relations spin artist said it was all a “mistake”, Sprint allegedly had a policy in place to handle these cases but “Mr. Company Man” didn’t follow internal instruction. Personally, I suspect the “policy” was hastily written by a company lawyer about the time the news hit the TV and some management official at Sprint realized how badly Sprint had stuck its mammary in the mangle. However, even if I am wrong, Mr. Spin Doctor, what action is going to be taken against that Sprint employee? As far as I am concerned he or she was a willing accessory in a kidnapping.

Faithful readers? This is the time to get hold of your nearest Congress-critter and especially for you Californians to get hold of Governor “Fat Lip” .. oops I mean Schwarzenegger and (as soon as he clears up his driving without a license issue) ask that they or he get on Sprint and the other cellular carrier’s case and let them know that when law enforcement official asks for help, you give it to him and worry about the $25 fee later. Perhaps Sprint could hold a bake sale, they certainly must be too poor to find $25 to save a child.

Brought to you from the folks at SatViz where tracking assistance to law enforcement is always free, 7/24/365