Police use Web to find, recover stolen property

By: Marcus Tantillo, Citizen Reporter

04/23/2005

Pasadena police have recovered 55 items stolen in 12 to 15 different burglaries after linking the items to suspects who pawned them in 15 pawn shops throughout the area.

The recoveries were facilitated by a Web-based service that allows police agencies timely access to pawnshop records. Pasadena police recently subscribed to the service, L.E.A.D.S. Online, which works with pawnshops to create databases of received items which police can then search looking for stolen items.

The pawn shops are required to log in the received items by their serial numbers which are usually unique, according to J.A. Shirley, a detective for the Pasadena Police Department.

He said that in the past few months, storage sheds at several apartment complexes and churches had items stolen from them. In several of those cases, Shirley said, the owners of the stolen items were able to give police serial numbers for the items and those numbers showed up in the L.E.A.D.S. data base.

Currently police have recovered between $20,000 and $25,000 worth of stolen items and linked those items to two suspects, according to Shirley.

Shirley said the new system allows the department to access the pawn shop activity the next day rather than having to wait a couple of months as with the old system. He said because of the quick turnaround they were able to recover items before they left the store. In addition, it was much easier to link the information from different stores because of the database.

Shirley said the key element to the success of the program was that there were serial numbers available. The chances of recovering most common items such as televisions or tools are almost zero without serial numbers, he said.

Richard W. Berner, 40, and Ned A. Lail, 37, both of Houston, were arrested in connection with the recovery of the stolen items, said Shirley.

Police have determined the owners of most of the recovered items, and are working on the rest.

(L.E.A.D.S.ONLINE CLIENT - PASADENA, TX POLICE DEPT.)