Stolen goods may become easier to find in Casper
By CHRISTINE ROBINSON
Star-Tribune staff writer
Thieves beware.
Casper-area police forces may begin using a faster way to recover stolen property from pawn shops, second-hand stores and eBay both in Casper and across the country after the Casper City Council meeting tonight.
Since registering for LeadsOnline, a stolen property database, the Cheyenne police force has recovered one to two snatched items each week from pawn shops both in Laramie County and around the country, said Casper Police Lt. Don Simmer.
In addition to individual stolen items, LeadsOnline also helped the Cheyenne police solve a 2004 series of gun and crossbow robberies when various items began popping up on the database.
There are 720 police forces from across the country registered with LeadsOnline that can access inventories within 24 hours of a crime being committed from pawn shops, Internet drop-off stores such as eBay, second-hand stores and scrap metal yards.
The system eliminates lengthy paper processing and gives police an opportunity to immediately check pawn shop records from over 1,100 cities in all 50 states.
The system could be beneficial to the Casper Police Department.
"We are in a three-month backlog and we have to hand enter and sort through all of the information," said Casper Police Detective Robin Tuma. "After 30 days that stuff is sold and we don't even know it was pawned."
"It makes it easier for us to access information. It saves manpower," he said.
With 137 million transactions currently in the system, Dallas-based LeadsOnline President Dave Finley said instead of sorting through paper, detectives can focus on -- solving cases.
"Even if the police force dedicates a lot of time to picking up the paperwork and looking through it, the crooks aren't always nice enough to sell it in that jurisdiction. They will go somewhere else and sell it," Finley said.
With this system, law enforcement officers can search by name, serial number, item description or date allowing officers to recover, for example, an item stolen in Casper and sold in Oklahoma.
Police can also enter in the serial number or description of a stolen item and if it appears later on the site because once it is pawned, an e-mail notification will be sent.
The cost for the system is minimal, Finley said -- it would cost less than $5,000 each year for the Casper, Natrona County, Mills and Evansville police departments to join in the online service. He said the program pays for itself in saved man-hours.
Not all of Casper's pawn shop owners are convinced of the site's effectiveness.
Loan Ranger Pawn owner Kathy Rideout said she doesn't want to participate in the program because most stolen items are not taken to pawn shops and because she questions the site's security.
"Somebody can figure out how to hack into the system," said Rideout. "Police require we get people's Social Security numbers, addresses and phone numbers. Most of our customers ask how we will use the information and I say don't worry about it, it's only on one computer system in our store."
She resents how heavily pawn shops are regulated especially since only one tenth of one percent of stolen items are recovered from pawn shops.
Depend A Pawn owner Randy Wetzel said he is ambivalent about the new system. He already submits records to the police of transactions so this will not be any different for him or his business.
He said most criminals "know better" than to sell stolen items to a pawn shop, because of police regulations, and because he and his employees -- including his four-year-old chocolate lab, Duke -- do a pretty good job sorting out the crooks from the honest sellers.
"If this is something the police want to do, and they think it will help them find stolen items, it's fine with me," he said.
One Casper pawn shop is ahead of the proposal. Mister Money President and chief operating officer Tim Lanham said they decided three years ago to make all of their pawn shops record their information on LeadsOnline.
"Mister Money is interested in helping the police department solve crimes and we thought that this was a good way to go," he said. "We continue to use it and still like it. I think it is a great tool for law enforcement."
Reach Christine Robinson at (307) 266-0639 or christine.robinson@casperstartribune.net
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