Stolen GPS Devices Lead to South Bay Burglary Stash: Police

SANTA CLARA COUNTY, CA -- It did not take long for police to track down the suspects in an alleged burglary this week of a Santa Clara business. That's because when the suspects pried open the door Tuesday to a business in the 3100 block of De La Cruz Boulevard and proceeded to steal $18,000 worth of computer equipment, some 100 GPS devices were among their loot, police said Friday.

When the business operator discovered the GPS devices were among the items missing, police say he activated each device's unique tracking code, revealing that two clusters of the devices were in Alameda County: one in Union City, the other in Oakland.

On Wednesday, the Santa Clara Police Department's Special Enforcement Team located one of the clusters at a storage facility. The SET detectives conducted a records check on the person who rented the storage unit and learned he was a California Department of Corrections parolee who served time for weapons-related charges. The terms of his parole allowed police to obtain a search warrant in order to access the contents of the unit, police said.

While waiting to secure the warrant, detectives continued tracking the other cluster of GPS devices and noticed it was on the move in the Alameda area.

SET detectives closed in on the GPS signals coming from a vehicle near the intersection of Baywalk Road and Montego Bay in Alameda, and detained a man and a woman who were sitting inside the vehicle. A search of the vehicle was conducted and allegedly yielded drug paraphernalia, a controlled substance, brass knuckles, a set of keys belonging to a vehicle not owned by either of the suspects, and two of the GPS trackers stolen from the business.

Back at the storage facility, detectives were granted access to its contents and found the remaining GPS trackers along several other items allegedly taken from the victim's business, according to police.

But not everything recovered from the storage unit belonged to Tuesday's burglary victim, police said.

"Among the items recovered was an old photo album with military photographs and newspaper cuttings inside," police said. "The detectives conducted an ... internet search of the names in the newspaper article and located an individual by that name from Saratoga."

Detectives contacted the Saratoga resident, who said their Santa Clara business was burglarized Jan. 16. The victim provided video surveillance of the break-in, which police alleged Friday positively identifies the suspect as the same man arrested on suspicion of this week's break-in.

The suspects' names were not provided in the Santa Clara Police Department's statement Friday about the case.