Police have new LEADS in merchandise theft

December 22, 2004

By Molly McCullough, Staff Writer

Flower Mound police are putting the squeeze on criminals who want to sell stolen property in pawn shops.

Flower Mound Town Council approved a one-year agreement on Monday between Flower Mound Police and Law Enforcement Automated Database Search Online (LEADS Online), a search engine that allows the police to search for stolen merchandise sold to pawn shops across the country.

Flower Mound Police Detective Colin Sullivan, who is in charge of the Criminal Investigation Division, said LEADS is an invaluable tool that will help the police department better serve residents. “Everything, nowadays, is worth a fortune,” Sullivan said. “If you’ve recovered one diamond ring or one Rolex watch, you’ve paid for the entire system.”

Prior to the council’s approval, Flower Mound police were using the system on a trial basis. Even before that, Sullivan said the town would call up other law-enforcement agencies who subscribed to LEADS to ask for assistance. “That obviously got old very quickly; so we went up the chain of command to request it,” Sullivan said. “Sure enough, they agreed.”

More than 51 million items are currently listed on LEADS, the nation’s largest online investigative system. Sullivan said the search engine allows police to search by the item’s serial number or description and can even search by a suspect’s name. “It will give me every place, location, date and time where that individual has pawned items across the state and country,” Sullivan said.

Through the police department’s previously limited usage of the database, they have already recovered several stolen items. Sullivan said one aspect of the Web site that is important is if someone searched for an item and doesn’t find it, the database will conduct continual searches in the following days for the item. Sullivan said this is helpful because suspects may not pawn stolen items for several days after taking it.

“The worst thing I can tell them [the victims] is that there are no suspects and there is no hope finding the item,” Sullivan said. “LEADS Online gives them hope they wouldn’t have had previously.” Sullivan said LEADS might be able to help with the recent rash of vehicle burglaries that have robbed residents of several small electronic devices such as laptops and cameras. Sullivan added that numerous pawn shops within the area participate in the database, which makes things even more accommodating.

“We love it,” Sullivan said.

Contact staff writer Molly McCullough at 972-538-2117 or mcculloughm@scntx.com.