By Leon Fooksman
The Sun-Sentinel
PALM BEACH COUNTY, Fla. — Those grainy surveillance videos of robbers emptying cash registers and identify thieves cashing fake checks are about to go international.
Crime Stoppers of Palm Beach County plans to post crime footage on YouTube.com, the popular online video-sharing Web site.
The goal is for a much wider audience to see the police clips and prompt people to call in tips to help find assailants, said Sgt. Jim DeFago of Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office, coordinator of the crime-fighting organization. The videos are mostly shown on local TV and newspaper Web sites.
“The more information that’s out there, the more it will help us out with our investigations,” he said.
Crime Stoppers may not be the only one in Palm Beach County posting local crime videos on YouTube.
Boca Raton Police Services Department is considering posting videos on the site for its cases, said spokeswoman Officer Sandra Boonenberg.
The agency also has created a page on MySpace.com, the social networking site, to provide information on the unsolved killings of a mother and daughter found shot in their SUV at the Town Center mall Dec. 12. The page includes facts on a related carjacking at the mall, a robbery at Mizner Park and another killing west of Delray Beach.
The department may post information on recruiting officers and publicize programs on another page, Boonenberg said. “The purpose is to get this out to a different segment that doesn’t read newspapers or watch television,” she said.
Boynton Beach Police Department started its page on MySpace in September, drawing more than 100 links to Web surfers and encouraging notes from the public. The department devised the page so police didn’t have to depend on the media to let the public know what’s happening in the agency and to run suspects’ mug shots and other information, officials said.
Palm Beach County crime will debut on YouTube as soon as law enforcement agencies provide videos, DeFago said. Word is getting out, and DeFago expects videos to start streaming in within months.
There is no fee to post the videos on the Web site, although a Sheriff’s Office detective will get the videos from the police departments and edit them for the site, DeFago said. Most clips will feature a voice-over from detectives.
DeFago hopes his group will post dozens of videos each month on YouTube. Anyone who supplies tips that can help solve the crime will be eligible for up to $1,000 from Crime Stoppers.
Police departments across the country are putting videos on YouTube and other sites, police officials said. With the growth of the Internet, the potential is there for crime leads to trickle in from the millions of viewers across the globe, DeFago said.
“This is a cutting-edge tool,” said Paul Miller, spokesman for the Sheriff’s Office. “The Web is so important, and so many people are on it. You hit such a diverse group of people. You never know what can happen. It’s another avenue to solve crime.”
DeFago didn’t know of any South Florida cases where police made arrests based on tips generated from YouTube videos. Videos shown on the local TV news, though, have led to many viewers calling police and offering help in recent years, he said.
Copyright 2008 The Sun-Sentinel