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I mean there are parts of that story that absent someone texting them and handling them information don’t track for me.
First of all, this is a rental vehicle and thus unless you know which vehicle they’re renting from which rental place, you are not really able to put out the information or put trackers in the vehicle. You also need to figure out where they’re coming from and specific routes if you’re going to have assets in place to stop them en route. Even having the information of renting uhauls doesn’t help with tracking as there’s no way to pick out PF from dozens of people moving stuff around by uhaul. Even having the lísiense isn’t enough unless you get super lucky and happen to have your persons of interest drive past a cop car. Technology can’t help you find something you don’t know anything about.
Did they rent the vehicle with cash? If not, they could easily be tracked. Even if they did, rental companies have internal databases, which could well be penetrated.
It's most likely there were informants. But they don't actually need them.
Unless the card is flagged it would still take time to look through the databases and find the transaction, and this still doesn’t give you enough data to stop that one vehicle in transit. Unless they somehow blocked every possible route instantly, there isn’t a good way to find that truck and deduce where it’s going and then send the cops.
They don't need to block every possible route; they've got access to cameras and police license plate readers and all of that sort of thing.
You also need to get your cops in a position to catch them in rush hour traffic.
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