01-24-2001 Council Agenda - Laserfiche WebLink

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Record, Report, and Recover. This is a joint initiative of community oriented policing and the insurance industry. Its goal is to increase the number and accuracy of property loss reports made to police, thus increasing the identification of stolen property in the Automated Pawn SystemTM. It encourages every citizen to record descriptions, model and serial numbers of all their property, report every loss whether insured or not, and to recover stolen items more frequently because of their efforts. While APSTM is a software program that captures required transaction data, its real value is in the amount and kinds of data it collects and how it will share that data with other jurisdictions for the first time, electronically. With this information, investigators will have the ability to develop suspect information and initiate focused investigations of "qualified" leads. A query such as "give me the name of anyone who has pawned more than four different televisions in the past 30 days" is a good example of how APSTM can help law enforcement impact property crimes. Finally, APSTM can allow non- government entities such as insurance companies to query its files for stolen property. This is part of the strategic partnership with the insurance industry and should dramatically increase the identification of stolen property with no expense to the investigating agency. For this to happen, we must make data describing the property in a regulated transaction from a licensed pawnbroker or secondhand goods dealer public data. This is being addressed at the 1996 legislature. For additional information about the Automated Pawn System" and how your department might benefit by being part of it, please contact: Lt. Phil Hafvenstein MPD, License Division 350 South 5th St., Room 1 -A Minneapolis, MN 55415 (612) 673-3829 71513.1300 @compuserve.com Automated Pawn SystemTM and APSTM are Trade Marks ownc, Page 27 6