SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — San Francisco police officers helped
Apple Inc. investigators look for a missing iPhone prototype that was
left in a city restaurant in July, the police chief said, the second
time in two years the company has lost an unreleased smartphone.
Police Chief Greg Suhr told the San Francisco Chronicle (http://bit.ly/oOfTi1 ) that four plainclothes
officers accompanied two Apple investigators
who searched a San Francisco home for the iPhone prototype.
Apple
employees who contacted the department asking for help finding a lost
item conducted the house search after asking the resident’s permission,
and the officers did not enter the home, according to police.
Apple tracked the smartphone to the home using GPS technology, but the gadget wasn’t found there, said
Lt. Troy Dangerfield.
Apple officials have declined to comment on the case.
The Cupertino, Calif.-based company is reportedly planning to release a new version of its popular iPhone
this fall.
The
SF Weekly newspaper reported that Sergio Calderon, who lives in the
home, said he believed all six people were police officers and would not
have let the two investigators inside if he knew they worked for Apple.
Suhr said he didn’t know how the Apple employees presented themselves to Calderon.
"The
reason we do civil standby is to make sure there isn’t a problem," Suhr
told the Chronicle. "Whatever conversations the employees had with the
resident, I can’t say."
Suhr said it’s not uncommon for San Francisco police officers to help private investigators.
There
was no record of the officers’ involvement in the search because Apple
did not want a lost property report created, which was within the
company’s right, Suhr said.
Last week, two men were charged with
misdemeanors for selling a lost Apple iPhone 4 they found in March 2010
in a Redwood City, Calif., bar. That phone was sold to the gadget blog
Gizmodo.com for $5,000, prosecutors said.
Copyright 2011 The Associated Press.
