Ad Hock System

When Lt. Steve Harrelson,an officer with theLeon County Sheriff 's Office innorthern Florida, was supervisorof the property crimes unita few years ago, detectiveswere mired in a process thatprevented them from effectivelysolving many cases.Investigators had to collectcomputer disks that containedinformation about the latestitems sold to pawnshops. Thena secretary would need todownload the data.'It was a very slow processbecause you had to depend onthe detectives to go out everyweek and get the disks, andthen you're looking at a week'slag time' before the informationwas logged into the system.Sometimes, that timecould extend to three or fourweeks, depending on the secretary'sworkload, he noted.When detectives got cases,they would look at what wasstolen and run it through thepawn system once or twice,but they wouldn't check it anymore.'So you had stolen propertythat was getting throughthe system,' Harrelson said.Now, law enforcement offi-cials are throwing a wider netaround thieves in Florida. duringthe past four years, officialswith the Leon County Board ofCounty Commissioners andthe Sheriff 's Office haveworked to expand to othercounties a Web-based applicationthat helps detectivesmatch pawned items withstate and nationaldatabases ofstolen goods.The North FloridaPawn Networklets police officerssolve and closecases a lot quickerthan the oldpaper-based, single-jurisdictionsystem, officialssay. A fully functional versionof the system went live in January.It includes interfaces forpawnshops, state and nationalsystems, and an automatic notificationsystem to alert detectiveswhen there is a match betweenpawned and stolenitems.The expansion of the NorthFlorida Pawn Network cameabout as a fluke, Harrelsonsaid. One pawnshop in thecounty said it was going to sendits data by e-mail to the sheriff's office.The initial typical law enforcementresponse was: 'No,you will do it the way we prescribeas per Florida statute,'Harrelson said. 'Then, I said,'Wait a minute, that's a greatidea. If they can do it, whycan't other pawnshops do it? 'We looked into it and found[other shops] could send viae-mail,' he said.The property unit started offsmall, working with the pawnshopsin Leon County. Officersexplained to the store managershow the system wouldbenefit them. For instance,they would not have to stopdoing business and gather dataevery time a detective soughtinformation. Also, the systemwould help law enforcementget the data quicker becausenow the pawnshops wouldsend in their information everyafternoon or morning.'It got to be almost a realtimesystem. You pawn ittoday, we're going to knowabout it tomorrow,' Harrelsonsaid. 'It sped up how fast thedata got put into the system.'Before the detectives even gota case assigned to them, thedata was in the pawn system,he said.'So if they were looking forstolen items, they could findthem very quickly. Right offthe bat, we had three or fourcases that were resolved[quickly] because detectiveswere able to track down thestolen property.'Harrelson, an early proponentof the system, wonderedif it could be expanded to othercounties. Developers with thecounty's information technologydepartment assured himthis could be accomplished becauseother counties' law enforcementagencies had accessto the system through theFlorida Department of LawEnforcement Criminal JusticeNetwork (CJNet). So now theyneeded the interface to downloadtheir data into the system,he said.Once that function was developed,the system took offlike wildfire, Harrelson said.The county's IT team developeda Web-based applicationthat allowed investigators tosearch through data from anydesktop or wireless deviceswith their secure CJNet connection,said Hermon Davis,justice information systemscoordinator at Leon County'smanagement information systemdivision and one of the developersof the system.'We tried to take everything offthe records clerks and detectives'to achieve a real paperlesssystem, he said. Davis' team developedinterfaces to CJNet'sstolen property databases andthe FBI's National Criminal InformationCenter to let detectivescross-check pawned andstolen property statewide daily,Davis said.The time to develop interfacesto pawnshops, the stateand national systems and noti-fication was minimal. It tookless than eight months lastyear, he said.The Sheriff 's Department cannow locate items before peopleknow they arestolen, Harrelsonadded. 'Manytimes, people areon vacation whentheir houses arebroken into.'There are currently18 countiesand 22 citiesconnected to thesystem, Davissaid. The network includes 146pawnshops and 215,000pawnshop customers.The next step is to expandcoverage to include counties inAlabama and Georgia thatborder Florida, he added.Harrelson is now in the professional-standards division,but he continues to promotethe pawn network when calledupon.The partnership betweenLeon County's IT and sheriff 'soffices has worked very well,Harrelson noted. 'Here youhave computer guys ' civilians' working in total cooperationwith law enforcementofficers,' he said. 'I don't knowany other system that allowsthis many counties to monitorpawned items.'