Sacramento City-Wide Crimewatch

BACKGROUND: I am a retired CHP Officer and I worked for many years as The CHP’s Anti Graffiti Coordinator in the Los Angeles area. Around the same time, many of the people I dealt with formed a nonprofit group called The Nograf Network. This network is open to anyone wanting information or to help stop graffiti. Over the years, I had experience with every camera system and database system that was associated with graffiti.

MISSION: This discussion is for the Database and I will touch on the cameras:  

A city in Australia just put this database and associated camera system in place and in just under 3 months, the city saw an 87%reduction in graffiti as well as the capture of 42 vandals, and 20 others
stopped tagging altogether due to these arrest.

What if Sacramento could do the same?
How much money could be saved annually?

The Grip System Graffiti Database is the only database of its kind where you can document over 30 crimes including graffiti.

You can send in photos of the graffiti as well as a photo after it has been removed. This is what courts need in order to even think about prosecution a vandal.

The main aspect of this database is that you can document graffiti across all city boundaries as it is web based. Since vandals have no limit on territory, the graffiti in another city may be the same that is in your city and I have found that many times, another city has caught and identified the vandals I was looking for but there was no mechanism for me to find that information out except by traveling from city to city an department to department.

Grip solves that in that it is easy to look up a vandals moniker to see if it has been identified to a suspect.

Other database systems charge tens of thousands for access when Grip charges less than $1000 a year. Grip owners feel that cities should not be gouged by high fees by someone just housing the information.

Grip also has IPhone and Android apps that allow citizens to take photos in the field and report directly to the database. This information is then available to city staff to schedule cleaning and also to police for case development.

All the tools are in place to not only document each case, but to actually start making these vandals responsible for their crimes when you can capture them using the Tripwire Covert Camera system.

It is very easy to catch vandals in the act if these tools are in place and actually used.

First step is to get Grip used and start getting these crimes entered. This is a great starting tool for Sacramento and I do hope that we are able to get the PD to start looking at Grip as a tool to help capture these vandals.

• Can we incorporate Grip data into City reporting php programming with exif export?
• Paperless reporting
• Web Based Database
• Data also available to other neighboring agencies
• Smart Phone Apps available for reporting
• Grip has the ability to send to an email address, the data when a record is uploaded, can that data be used to fill in existing Agency database system

Feel free to add to this discussion so I can see what you are all thinking to help me understand what direction we might be headed