Seguin – Seguin Police Chief Jason Brady said rising property crimes are impacting his city.
To stay ahead of the problems, he’s organized a criminal apprehension and street enforcement unit, and part of that effort is community policing.
The chief is asking residents and businesses with security cameras on their properties to voluntarily register the cameras with police.
The internal list and map will be used to help investigators speed up cases.
“If something happened in an area, our officers will be knocking on doors regardless. It’s just, it might be a slower process trying to, to see if you actually have a camera. If somebody is actually home when we’re there trying to reach out and do our canvass. So it’s just a tool that we, we want the community to be involved in helping us solve these property crimes,” he explained.
Brady said the program is voluntary and those who sign up won’t be forced to hand over images. Police won’t have access to the system or passwords.
“All this does is it just, it just, we know that in this instance, we’ll be able to maybe contact somebody who’s already cooperative, has a camera and probably knows how to use it,” he said.
Leon Valley, New Braunfels and other local cities also have similar voluntary registries.