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Jason Mosher

Sheriff's Journal

Vernon County Sheriff.

Opinion

What we do could not happen without the help from our community

Saturday, March 5, 2016

I have said before that one of our biggest assets when it comes to the work we do at the Sheriff's Office is the citizens. I heard a story a long time ago from a retired detective who told me he worked a homicide case shortly after he became a detective. He said he showed up and started looking over the crime scene and spent hours looking at video, pulling finger prints, and any other evidence they could find.

He said an older gentleman pulled up in a driveway just down the road from the scene. He walked down and asked the gentleman if he saw a specific car or person they believed was at the house and he said "no." He asked a few more questions about certain people they were looking for and the man said he had not seen any of them either. The detective could not think of any other questions to ask the guy so he said thanks and started to leave.

As he was leaving he realized he had asked specific things and not really given the man a chance to just talk. He turned back to the man and asked hey did you see anything else that would help me? The man surprisingly said "why yes, I saw the guy get shot." When the detective asked why he did not just say that to begin with, the old man said "you never asked me."

I was also on a burglary call one time where the burglar had stolen an iPad. The detectives had asked the owner what color of case it had, if it had any unique markings that would help them identify it and then started discussing where someone may try to pawn it so they could try and get it back. They had asked the lady all kinds of questions about the stolen items, but finally when we were leaving, I remembered the story that I just mentioned above and asked the lady, do you have any idea where we could find your stolen iPad? She said "no, but I do have GPS tracking turned on if that would help." The iPad was found a few hours later.

Sometimes you have to be specific in what information you want, but if you make a point to ask, you may get some very good answers. We recently took a report of a theft and was told by the owner that he had surveillance cameras that captured images of the thieves. The photos were very clear and all that needed to be done was identify who the people were in the photos. We decided to turn to the public for help and placed the photos on Facebook. In less than two hours we received more than 30 responses and were able to identify who the suspects were.

During training, they always stress to ask questions from people in the area to gain as much information as possible, but I feel like utilizing the public for assistance is one area that law enforcement can improve on.

I could not count the number of cases that were solved because of assistance from a neighbor, a victim, or just someone driving down the road who noticed something that needed to be reported. We have a job to do, but we could never do it without the help of the citizens. Every comment, every tip, and every good deed is a valuable asset to our work.