An officer snapped a selfie and added to the owner’s Facebook with the caption, “You should probably put a password on your phone. When you are ready to pick it up it will be at Albury police station.” Soon afterwards, the post gathered nearly 150 Likes and shares, but the fun and games didn’t stop there.
Spurred on by the response, Albury police officers moved on from amusing selfies to groan-inducing puns. Next, a picture of the phone inside a locked cell was uploaded with the comment: “If you’re worried about the battery going flat, don’t. By the time you pick it up it will be fully ‘charged.’ It’s a great ‘cell’ phone.
They also joked the phone would be out earlier than expected due to good behavior, but only if the owner posted bail. Comments on the Facebook page called the stunt “epic,” and the officers responsible were called the, “best policemen ever,” and “legends.”
Happily, the police department took the joke in the way it was intended. Albury police’s Inspector Moodie (who didn’t live up to his name) said it was a “novel way” of finding out who owns a lost device, and that police have the authority to search a phone in this way. “It doesn’t surprise me the creative ways they come up with in getting property back to the original owner,” he told the Border Mail.
The owner visited the station to pick up her phone six hours after the first post was uploaded, and didn’t need to give her name, because she was recognized from her Facebook page. Amazingly, according to the Daily Mail, she hadn’t seen the
