New police tool: neighborhood watch by Web

When someone burgled a home in De Pere, Wis., last July, they stole - among other things - a child's plastic Coke-bottle coin bank, bursting with about 1,200 quarters.

Three days later the culprit entered a Green Bay bank to convert this silver into folding green - and was immediately arrested.

What fingered this guy?

The hottest policing tool since lie detectors and squad cars: the Internet.

The thief had been operating in a jurisdiction which uses computer software that sends out alerts to businesses within a 30-mile radius. By the time the crook walked into the bank, tellers were already on the lookout for anyone with too many quarters.

Indeed, police and sheriffs departments from Florida to Washington State are discovering that ordinary citizens by the thousands seem eager to team with police in fighting crime - provided their partnership is geared around e-mails and Web pages.

"Over the last few years there's been a lot more use of citizens in police work," explains Jacqueline Helfgott, associate professor of criminal justice at Seattle University. "Police cannot do it all, so now the Internet can help citizens get involved with their community's police force."

Look, for example, at the small city of Fairmont, Minn. In late 2001, police created a "Fairmont's Most Wanted" list, posted it on their website, and called public attention to it through a newspaper article.

"When we first publicized it we had a real big response - and we apprehended four of those people in the first week," reports Sgt. Corey Klanderud, who handles technology issues for the department. In fact, during the list's first year, "ten or eleven" persons with warrants were arrested directly because of citizens who studied the website.

In one of those cases the department received an e-mail from a resident of Duluth, 300 miles north, who provided the address of a suspect that lived on the same street. "This technology is going to help us have more eyes and ears in the community," says the sergeant.

At the center of this crime-fighting evolution is a Minnesota firm, Citizen Observer. The company, whose software sent out an alert to the community that caught the burglar with the quarters in the Coke bottle, offers police agencies a four-part package to galvanize communities:

• The Business Alert Network, which permits police to contact participating businesses with warnings of scams, bad check artists, and profiles of burglaries.

• The Residential Crime Alert, where anyone can register to receive police bulletins, including suspect descriptions and photos.

• A School Alert Network that would communicate with parents in event of Columbine-like emergencies.

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