Crooks caught with "loaded" RV batteries

The high cost of batteries has made ripping off deep cycle batteries from RVs pretty popular these days. But a group of battery burglars has been foiled by clever cops armed with technology.

RV dealers in Michigan have been complaining that crooks have been cobbing batteries from rigs parked on their lots. Michigan State Police took up the case, and hatched a plot of their own. The police approached U.S. Battery Manufacturing Company, headquartered out of Corona, California. What the Michigan cops proposed to the battery company was an instant hit.

U.S. Battery handed over several empty battery cases, that looked all the world like "real" RV deep cycle batteries. Working with an RV dealer, police installed the fakes onto RVs. They looked real, and evidently were fitted out with enough internal material to make them feel real, too. But in addition to the inert contents of the phony batteries, police also installed GPS transmitters.

You guessed it. A few weeks after the bait batteries were installed, battery bandits hit the dealer lot, taking more than a dozen deep cycle batteries. Included among their loot were two of the decoys that immediately began transmitting a homing signal to the waiting police. Police nabbed the thieves just a few miles from the dealership, and one of the astonished crooks sang like a bird, revealing his involvement in all earlier thefts.