CPD asks for public's help

CPD posted images on its Web site to identify potential criminals.

By Katherine Miller

Published Feb. 12, 2009

The Columbia Police Department is asking for the public's help in identifying seven subjects whose pictures, gathered from surveillance cameras, are posted on the department Web site.

Six out of the seven individuals are wanted for questioning regarding credit card fraud, while the seventh is wanted for a first-degree bank robbery.

"The one photo is a bank robber, so I would not say that is not a dangerous individual," said Capt. Stephen Monticelli, CPD's Patrol Division commander. "The other ones are individuals, that if it's a credit card fraud, they could have gotten the credit card in a burglary."

All of the crimes posted on the Web site were committed between January 2007 and January 2009, according to the Web site. Monticelli said these seven subjects were chosen out of many different cases, mainly because they have good quality images of them that are easy to identify.

Monticelli said surveillance images could be important in identifying people involved in property crimes. By the time a retailer figures out a fraud has been committed, evidence will have been destroyed and the crime scene contaminated.

"There's other things they can do, fingerprints and DNA and all kinds of other stuff, but on property-type crimes, sometimes that's limited," Monticelli said.

Normally, if the department had a photograph of someone they were trying to identify, they would contact the local media with a news release, but in cases like credit card fraud, Monticelli said it's harder to get the local media to publicize them. The Web site will be a new way to publicize the less-covered property crimes.

In the past, the department has used the Crime Stoppers Web site to display images of people wanted for violent crimes or those whom the department has been looking for, for some time.

"I didn't want to use that site because of the different nature of the cases these were, and I wanted this to be similar to the Crime Stoppers site where people could regularly go to look at various different cases and be able to identify them," Monticelli said. "On Crime Stoppers, most of the time, it's someone in particular we're looking for, whereas these individuals are unknown individuals. We just don't have any idea who they are."

Monticelli said Crime Stoppers has been very effective in the past, and the department hopes to continue that success with this new posting on their department Web site.

"As of this morning, there's already been three contacts with people from the outside providing information," Monticelli said. "It's already been very productive for us."

The department could not release any information they have collected from the public until an arrest has been made.

"We haven't had any 100 percent successes yet, but they're giving the investigators a little bit more information so they can go out and figure out the case," Monticelli said.

Police will update the Web site as more images of potential suspects arrive.