System to track stolen goods

April 13, 2005

CANTON — To combat theft, the Canton Police Department will implement the same computer program Ridgeland police installed in January. Canton Police Chief Robert Winn said LEADS Online soon will help police track and retrieve stolen property. "All of your pawnshops, if they have this program, anything that comes in...they will register it on this computer," he said, "and if anything has been reported stolen, it will pop up on e-mail."

Winn describes Canton's theft problems as "moderate," but said he expects online crime-fighting to help catch people committing property crimes. Chris Adams, manager of Big Daddy's Pawn Shop, at 1976 Mississippi 43, said he has implemented Leads Online, the Web-based investigation system founded in 2000 that is an acronym for Law Enforcement Automated Database Search. "What we do is go every Monday into our computer and send the information to LEADS Online," Adams said. "We used to have to print it out every night, and the police would have to come and get it. It's just much easier for them and it is for us, too."

Jackson Police Chief Robert Moore said Tuesday he plans to recommend purchasing the LEADS Online program after a 30-day trial ended in March. Moore will meet with the City Council this month to push for contract negotiations. In January, the Ridgeland Board of Aldermen voted to allow the Ridgeland Police Department to implement LEADS Online.

Ridgeland Police Sgt. John Neal said police were able to solve a grand larceny during a 30-day trial period. "We had some theft of construction tools on Highland Colony Parkway," Neal said in January, "and, using a suspect's name, we were able to track down 29 different items spread out over several different pawnshops."

Law enforcement agencies nationwide use the system, billed as the nation's largest online investigative system, to solve such crimes as burglaries, homicides, arson, identity theft and narcotics crimes. Police use the system to search and analyze transaction records collected from pawnshops and secondhand stores that are registered with LEADS Online. They report transaction records daily that include detailed information about merchandise, as well as the identity of the person who pawned the merchandise. Neal said most Jackson pawnshops are online.

Cooper Smith, public relations representative for LEADS Online, said the transaction process takes less than 30 seconds each day 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."

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 pawnshops. The company makes money from police department subscriptions that Smith said are based on the size of the department.