The Sheriff’s Office is continually faced with the task of locating, identifying and recovering property reported stolen in Cleburne County. One of the newer tools used to do this is a data base of information collected from pawn shops nationwide called Leads-On-Line.

      Three times during the month of January, Detectives from the Sheriff’s Office have located stolen property at Pawn Shops using the Leads-On-Line program. The property a flat screen TV, a lap top computer and a muzzle loader were located at Pawn Shops in Bryant Arkansas, Dallas Texas, and Cabot Arkansas. One of the items, the .50 caliber muzzle loader located in Cabot, had been missing since being stolen from a residence in Cleburne County during 2004.The key to being able to identify these items as being the ones stolen in Cleburne County was the fact that the victims of the thefts were able to provide the serial numbers of the items taken. Both the lap top computer located in Dallas Texas and the flat screen TV located in Bryant were reported stolen in November 2011. That items reported less than 2 months ago were located as far away as Dallas, Texas emphasizes how important it is for people to keep records of the brand, the model number and of the serial numbers of the property that they own. Owners of items without factory serial numbers can mark an item with a unique identifying number and that number can be used to enter an item as stolen property into the National Crime Information Center and can also be used to search data bases such as Leads-On-Line.

       Your help in providing accurate identifying information greatly increases our chances of recovering stolen property. I can’t express how important it is to document serial numbers on you property!

Sheriff Marty Moss