On Thursday 7th May at 21:06 pm Andrew Dart (Secretary at Hadden Hill Golf Club) received a uWatch system alert on his phone, informing him that their Cube had been activated less than a minute earlier suggesting that someone was walking around the club’s golf buggies after the course was closed.
The uWatch Cube is accredited under the Police’s “secured by design” scheme.
The Cube is a small, portable and smart, battery powered crime prevention device that notifies you when a crime is in progress. The Cube does not require Wi-Fi or mains power and has a range of sensors and a day/night camera to keep an eye on the things you can’t – even in the most remote and rural environments. It works in any country where there is a GSM signal.
On Thursday, The Cube’s PIR motion sensor was activated and within 45 seconds Andrew Dart received the alert on his phone, which the criminals were completely unaware of. Knowing that there should be no one near the buggies at 9pm in the evening, he called the police who arrived at the Golf Course shortly after Andrew.
This happened just as the three criminals were about to drive one of the golf buggies onto the course rather than the road, which was likely their initial plan. The police officers pursued the offenders on foot across the golf course with Andrew and his partner following in his car, filming the event. Just two or three minutes later and the theft may have been another unsolved crime statistic.
The criminals were followed to the end of the course where a wooded area begins. The police followed them and found a dropped item of clothing and tools. Unable to locate the offenders, the police deployed tracker dogs and were able to trace them using the scent from the discarded clothing, to a building site where they were hiding in a partially built house. The police were able to detain two of the three offenders.
Hadden Hill golf course have since received a £1000 + bill for cost of repairs to the buggy, however, the golf course owner Michael Morley commented “We could not possibly have caught them without The Cube and they probably would have taken another buggy if we had not gotten there in such good time”.
uWatch Ltd product manager Louis Bennet commented: “This is a typical application for the Cube where valuable equipment, necessarily stored in remote unattended places is vulnerable to theft. The speed of the alert gives the police those few extra seconds which is the difference between catching thieves or them getting away.”
The thefts of golf buggies are increasingly frequent across the UK and the theft of batteries has been linked to the development of methamphetamine. The Springs Golf Club in North Stoke, near Wallingford, lost £4000 worth in 2019.
