Apple’s Find My feature makes a SWAT team raid an old lady

It’s not all success stories and roses when it comes to Apple’s device tracking service. Granted, AirTags have helped many people over the past few years, but sometimes this technology is doomed to fail. One such case saw a Denver detective leading a SWAT team into an old lady’s home after Find My said there was a stolen iPhone at the location.Nobody in their right mind would raid a house on just a stolen iPhone, of course. The case is much more serious. It involves a stolen truck full of guns and cash. The vehicle was taken on January 3 from a Denver Hyatt hotel and contained six guns, two drones, $4,000 in cash, and the aforementioned iPhone.

When interviewing the victim, Denver detective Gary Staab learned that Apple’s Find My app had locked on a residential location twice after the accident. So the detective pulled some legal levers and got a warrant to raid the place.

The resident of the address turned out to be a 77-year old lady, and no firearms or any of the stolen goods were found on the site. Furthermore, the SWAT team destroyed quite a few things in the search process (including a valuable doll collection) and used a battering ram to take down two doors.

Now detective Staab is being sued over the search and all the mayhem, with the main reason being that he failed to verify the location independently and relied only on the Find My app. Apple states that “Find My” is designed to pinpoint approximate locations and should not be used as a tool for initiating SWAT raids.

What’s even worse is that the Denver Police Department never apologized for the mistake, at least not until they found out that they were being sued. You can get more details about the story, including some footage of the raid, on 9News.

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