CLEVELAND, Tenn. – The Bradley County Sheriff’s Office is asking the County Commission to subscribe to an Internet service that tracks pawned items and compares them to lists of stolen goods.
Capt. Steve Lawson, who heads the criminal investigation division, said the electronic service will save money over the current tracking method – a detective poring over volumes of handwritten reports that pawnshops turn in daily.
“Daily we have to go through the hard copies, and we need to move on and go to some sort of database,” Mr. Lawson said.
A one-year subscription to the service would cost $5,890, he said. The manual searches take about 10 hours a month, he said, and hiring someone to input the written reports into a sheriff’s office system would cost about $27,600 a year.
The commission’s finance committee will take up the request this week, said Ed Elkins, committee chairman.