San Francisco Police Launch Investigation into Missing iPhone 5 Search

CNET reports that the San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) has launch an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the search for a prototype iPhone that went missing from a San Francisco bar in late July.

The case resulted in a significant amount of publicity after the SFPD initially reported that it had no record of any investigation into the disappearance or participation in a search of a house identified as where the lost iPhone had been tracked to. That claim led to suggestions that Apple's own security personnel may have posed as police officers, but the SFPD later acknowledged that it did participate in the search, accompanying Apple security officers to the house but not actively searching the premise themselves.

Police here have begun looking into what role officers played in a search by Apple for a missing unreleased iPhone.

Lt. Troy Dangerfield, of the San Francisco Police Department, told CNET today that an internal investigation has begun into determining how officers assisted two Apple security employees in their July search of a home in the Bernal Heights neighborhood for the handset.

The investigation is official confirmation that the SFPD is interested in learning the full story behind the search and whether there was any improper activity by either police officers or Apple's security team. The subject of the search has indicated that he was led to believe that all of those involved in the search were police officers, and would not have consented to the search had he known that the investigators conducting the search were private security personnel. The subject has also alleged that officers attempted to intimidate him by questioning the immigration status of those living in the house, threatening "trouble" despite his claims that all members of the household are in the United States legally.