“Please call 911 if you see this person …. Inform the 911 dispatcher that you have spotted an individual that looks like the person who has been breaking into neighbors’ backyards and stealing property,” read a posting to the Facebook page Historic District Neighborhood Watch, which included video of the man in a black Atlanta Falcons T-shirt prowling through a backyard and peering into a home.
Surveillance cameras recorded him in a resident’s backyard at Second Avenue and Eighth Street at 4:10 a.m. on Aug. 2 and again at 9:30 p.m. on Aug. 4. At 2:30 a.m. Friday, he was on a porch at Fifth Street and Front Avenue, where police questioned him but had no reason to detain him because they didn’t know about the camera footage.
By comparing still photos and videos from various security cameras, neighbors decided the same guy was in all of them.
Around 5 p.m. Wednesday, police arrested a suspect, who they say admitted to some of the thefts.
Investigators were aided by the security-camera footage neighbors collected and shared, said police Sgt. Thomas Hill: “It did aid in getting the individual identified.”
High-tech crime fighting
This is the new era of neighborhood crime prevention, with images and immediate notifications, a significant upgrade from the old days of word-of-mouth warnings and community meetings.“It’s made it so much easier,” said Randy Brown, who just this summer retired as a Columbus police corporal after working 17 years in the department’s crime prevention unit, meeting with residents to organize and maintain Neighborhood Watch associations.
When he started that job in the late 1990s, the technology was primitive by today’s standards, and “social media” meant nothing.
Back then neighbors shared information by telephone or face-to-face meetings. Each Neighborhood Watch group had block captains whose responsibilities included informing the neighbors on his block of any crime trends.
Eventually email became the notification system, as dozens of residents could get the same message. Now more watch associations are taking to social media sites like Nextdoor and Facebook.
That wasn’t a trend police had to facilitate, Brown said: “They just took to it on their own.”
Because a designated administrator can decide who has access to such sites, residents don’t feel they risk their privacy by joining, he said: “They feel more secure now.”
Now installing home security cameras is a trend, and neighbors are using the websites to share their recordings. “I saw the increase over the last couple of years,” said Brown, who retired June 30. He’s now a reserve sheriff’s deputy.
‘Really good results’
Police Maj. Gil Slouchick, who heads the department’s investigative bureau, said the increasing use of such cameras has been a significant aid to investigators: “We get some really, really good results with them.”When police have a suspect’s image, they can distribute it through the news media to ask the public’s help identifying the person.
“On several occasions, we’ve had family members turn suspects in,” he said. That includes parents turning in their children, he said. Their motivations may vary: Some may be embarrassed; some may want some control over how their children are arrested, offering to bring them to the police.
“It makes the circumstances of the arrest less confrontational,” Slouchick said.
Some just want their children to straighten up, he said: “There are parents who just want their kids to do right.”
When victims have video of someone committing a crime, that’s sufficient probable cause for arrest, the major said. If the suspect can be identified, police can obtain warrants.
But the image needs to capture suspicious conduct, he warned: “Don’t take a picture of someone just walking down the street.”
He cautioned also that police can’t act on crimes that have not been reported to them. Sometimes neighbors share their security recordings among themselves, but don’t notify the authorities.
“If you have a theft, report it,” he said. It’s rarely an isolated incident, he noted – usually a neighborhood has a rash.
Brown emphasized that, too: Neighborhood crime fluctuates, and when it’s up in a specific area, that means multiple cases, not just one or two. Thieves typically hit as many victims as they can as quickly as they can, then move on to somewhere else.
Every victim needs to make a police report, so officers have the information they need to make arrests. Detectives now are more attune to crime trends through mapping and computer analysis, but the public has to provide the data.
“If you don’t give me a dot, I can’t connect that to the other dots,” Slouchick said.
He also advised residents to learn how to operate their own security equipment, and to keep it clean and in good repair. Some install it without knowing how to retrieve recordings, and some never go back to clean it, leaving camera lenses to be smeared by debris during bad weather.
©2016 the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer (Columbus, Ga.) Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
