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"Serving Madison County, Mississippi since 1892"

January 13, 2005

Ridgeland police point, click to crime leads

· Online tool will trace stolen items

By LaReeca Rucker
lrucker@mcherald.com

RIDGELAND — The Ridgeland Police Department will soon implement a new online crime-fighting tool designed to help catch thieves and track stolen property.

Police Chief Jimmy Houston said the department will subscribe to LEADS Online, a Web-based investigation system that is an acronym for Law Enforcement Automated Database Search.

Sgt. John Neal of the Ridgeland Police Department said that during their 30-day free-trial period, the were able to solve a grand larceny and an alleged house burglary.

"Recently, we had some theft of construction tools on Highland Colony Parkway," Neal said, "and using a suspect's name, we were able to track down 29 different items spread out over several different pawn shops."

Using the system, police discovered that the alleged house burglary was not a burglary at all.

Michael Grasso/The Herald

Ridgeland police investigator John Neal runs a search on LEADS Online, a service that helps locate stolen goods in area pawn shops. Ridgeland police began using LEADS about a month ago and have seen promising results.

"A woman came home and realized that someone had been in the house," Neal said. "She gave a description of the items, and when we ran the name of her son through there the day they came up missing, we found the items in a pawn shop in Jackson. She decided she didn't want to press charges since it was a family member."

The system, billed as the nation's largest online investigative system, is used by law enforcement agencies throughout the United States to solve crimes that range from burglary to homicide, arson, identity theft and narcotics crimes.

Police use the system to search and analyze transaction records collected from pawnshops and secondhand stores.

Thousands of business that accept merchandise from the public, such as pawn shops and second-hand stores, are registered with LEADS Online and report transaction records daily that include detailed information about merchandise as well as the identification of the person who provided the merchandise to the store. Ridgeland has only one pawn shop, which is not LEADS Online-accessible. That means the owner of the pawnshop, by law, must send a written transaction report to the Ridgeland Police Department twice a month informing them of daily activities that includes the pawn pledgers' names, identifying information and a description of the property pawned.

Police must now compare many pawnshop transactions by hand, but that would change if they all were required to join LEADS Online. Requiring pawnshops to go online is something that is decided in each individual jurisdiction.

"Most of the Jackson pawn shops are online," Neal said, "and it was put before the Jackson city council about a month ago for a vote. I was under the impression that they were going to approve it. If you talk to most of the pawn shop owners in Jackson, they are in favor of it."

Cooper Smith, public relations director for LEADS Online, said the city of Jackson has informed his office that they are also planning on subscribing to the system.

William Boles, owner of Big Daddy's Pawn Shop in Jackson, said LEADS Online is helping change the image of the pawn business.

"We have always been really ticky about what we take because everybody thinks that pawn brokers take stolen items or they are a shady business," he said. "In reality, we are probably one of the largest retailers. The biggest part of our business is retail. Seventy-five percent to 80 percent of our goods, individuals come back and get."

Boles said the online system has helped his store work more closely with police departments to assure locals that they are doing everything they can to help put criminals in jail.

"The Jackson office of the Mississippi Pawnbrokers Association has bought a computer for the city of Jackson, so they will be able to get on LEADS Online," said Boles. "That is just one of the things we are trying to do to change the image, and LEADS Online is helping us do that."

Neal said Ridgeland city leaders will have to study the city's pawn ordinance to see if requiring the city's pawn shop to become LEADS Online accessible is a good idea. Ridgeland began using the system on a trial basis in November and the Board of Aldermen voted to allow the department to subscribe at the last meeting.

"Hopefully, once this system is known about, it will benefit the police as well as the pawn shops, too," Neal said. "Those who do take things to the pawnbrokers legitimately shouldn't be offended by this or have any fear. This is mainly a tool to catch the bad guy."

Businesses across the country have hundreds of point-of-sale and accounting systems in their stores, and LEADS Online accepts files sent from any of them. Smith said the transaction process takes less than 30 seconds per day to transfer, and most police searches take a second or less to return results.

Police can search locally or nationwide using Social Security numbers, serial numbers and names. Smith said the system also allows police to pinpoint a suspect's whereabouts at a specific place in time.

"To pawn something, you have to show identification by law," he said. "If they check the system against that person's name, they can see if they were in the area that day."

LEADS Online is an evolved version of previous processes that have been put in place by police departments, Smith said. "At one time, pawn shops were required to provide slips of all the transactions they made during the day," he said. "Now, we have a national database of thousands of pawn shops across the country uploading their information on a daily basis."

Smith said officers can also conduct item searches that will continue to search the system for a predetermined length of time, which means if the item isn't in the system on the day of the theft and is pawned a week later, the system will alert the officer and the officer won't have to remember to check for it daily.

The service is free to pawn shops. The company makes their profit from police department subscriptions that Smith said are based on the number of sworn officers within the department.

Dave Finley, president of LEADS Online, said law enforcement has struggled for a long time with the investigation of property crimes. "It's very labor intensive," he said. "They frequently don't have a lot of tools to use in their investigations, and tracking down stolen property is sometimes very difficult.

"We wanted to come up with a better way for them to investigate crimes involving property and we have found that business owners are very supportive of police efforts."

Finley said several homicides have also been solved using the system. "In a large percentage of violent crimes, there is property taken," said Finley. "We have had several homicides solved based on property taken during a crime.

"We had one just recently in Kansas where a victim's gold teeth were sold in a second-hand store. They were able to track that back and identify the murderer."

Neal said homeowners can help protect their property by taking an inventory of their most valuable items, recording the serial numbers, the make of the products and the model numbers.

An engraver is available at the police department for members of the public who want to engrave their names on personal items. Neal said doing so will help police better identify stolen merchandise.

For more information, visit www.leadsonline.com.