Helping Law Enforcement Help You

What Information Is Needed?

There are two different types of information that will help: general information about equipment that will help an officer single out and identify stolen equipment and then there is information about single pieces of equipment such as where to find the identification number and who owns it that will help the officer identify the machine and its owner.

The first type of information is best delivered through training in the form of seminars or publications—both print and electronic. The idea is not to try to turn all officers into equipment experts, but to give them confidence, through a basic level of knowledge of equipment, about what are normal practices in the industry (and therefore what is suspicious) and where to go find more detailed answers.

The second type of information is best delivered through equipment industry specialists who can answer specific questions an officer might have about an individual piece of equipment—ideally at any time of day.

So the best way for you to help local law enforcement is to ensure that such training is provided on a regular basis and to inform officers about the different sources of information that will be able to answer their questions. Standard police training courses in academies and afterward are seldom afforded the time nor have the expertise to teach equipment investigation techniques. But whenever the insurance, construction, or equipment industries provide this training, it is well attended and received, and gives local equipment owners an excellent chance to make contact with local law enforcement with an interest in equipment crime.

There is a third type of information that might be described as "intelligence." For example you might let local police know about any big project in your area with valuable mobile equipment, particularly any that are hard to secure. But before you expect patrols to be routed to help reduce your risk, it is best to have first offered to help.

With this in mind, below are some practical steps that you can take to get the right information into the hands of law enforcement.

Training

You need a few simple elements to create a successful training program for local police:

• A facility with a classroom and an area in which equipment can be displayed (a rental store with a big room or warehouse would work);
• A lesson plan (see Resources below);
• An expert in equipment investigation techniques (see Resources below);
• A group of equipment owners who can meet the officers to discuss their concerns and offer help, and of course, a group of officers willing to spend a day learning about equipment.

All of these ingredients can be found in almost any community. You may have to bring in the instructor, but this can easily be done. If you are not lucky enough to have a local construction industry crime prevention program, then your local equipment owner association might be the best resource to help organize this. If you do not have such an organization, this training meeting may well lead to one being established. Future Expert Commentary articles will provide advice and a template for establishing a local equipment crime prevention program.

Equipment Information

Let's start with the basics. If you have a piece of equipment stolen without fully and accurately recording the serial number PRIOR to the theft, then you are not helping yourself or the police. Short of the thief accidentally trying to sell the equipment back to you or driving it past you on his way out of town, you will be out of luck.

A huge advantage for equipment thieves is that, until recently, law enforcement did not have quick, 24-hour access to ownership information for heavy equipment and theft reports often took days or weeks to get into the police computer due to delays in theft discovery. As most stolen equipment is being moved on weekends, and the theft often will not be discovered until Monday (at the earliest), there are only two ways in which this equipment can be identified. The first is if the thief has not yet had time to remove decals from the equipment.

TIP 1: Make sure that there are as many highly visible decals as possible on each machine that clearly show the name of the company that owns the equipment and—better still—include the telephone number so that the officer can call you to check that the equipment is where it should be.

TIP 2: Register your equipment by serial number and any other applied numbers on a national database that law enforcement uses to identify equipment. See the Resources list below for more information.

Funding Equipment Investigations

A very effective way to help police to focus on heavy equipment investigations is to get local equipment owners to club together to create an "equipment investigation fund." This money can then be put toward overtime during which the officers must focus on equipment investigations. It is, of course, vital that this be discussed formally with senior law enforcement in your area first and be executed in the way that they dictate. This liaison can normally be done by the detectives that are active in this area. This may seem extreme, but as long as it is formally organized at the right levels, it can be very effective. In one instance the American Rental Association of Texas raised $25,000 to fund equipment investigations during overtime and this resulted in the recovery of $1.2 million of stolen equipment!

Conclusion

The above ideas should really just be a starting point. The main thing is to reach out to local law enforcement and ask them how you can help them be more effective in combating equipment theft. You can then reach out to those listed in the Resources below to ask how best to deliver whatever is most needed. You will be surprised how effective this can be.