WE’VE PARTNERED with the Gig Harbor Police Department for a new feature this week called Community Crime Watch. Similar to CrimeStoppers, it will be an occasional photo or description of a locally committed crime with a tip line for the public to call in any related information.

For an example, you can turn to page 9B in today’s paper to find a photo from a surveillance camera that was stolen from the Great Car Care Center, right across the street from the Gateway office on Kimball Drive.

The suspect apparently didn’t think he would be on camera when he stole the expensive unit.

Thankfully, the camera recorded his actions. Police just need a little help to identify who he might be.
Community Crime Watch won’t be able to offer any rewards for information that leads to an arrest. It’s a small police department, and we’re a weekly newspaper, after all.

Instead, our investment is in the town we choose to call home. We want to help keep it safe. And if someone witnesses a crime, recognizes a suspect or hears about one after the fact, it’s our duty as citizens to report it.

While going public with open-case information doesn’t necessarily set a new precedent — law enforcement agencies often turn to the media to ask for tips from readers and viewers when leads run dry — it will be nice to have that source where people can turn.

We feel it’s an acknowledgement from the police department that we’re the trusted news source in Gig Harbor, and we’re honored that they came to us with this idea.

When the opportunity presents itself, police detectives will supply us with a short synopsis of a case description. We’ll run it alongside our regular list of police and fire reports, which typically appear near the back of the B section.

If you recognize any suspects, you can call 253-853-2421. Credible tips will be passed along to the detective on the case.

If all goes well, police plan to release some follow-up information that updates the case, particularly if a suspect is apprehended and charged with a crime.

We’re lucky to live in a place where crime tends to be related to property rather than violence. On any given week, you can read about several thefts, burglaries or acts of vandalism in the reports we gather from both the GHPD and the Peninsula Detachment of the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department.

Those types of crimes often get lost in the shuffle because they’re not high-profile cases you read about or watch on TV. But they’re still crimes, and police work diligently to solve them.
Going that extra step to involve the public shows us that police do take those investigations seriously.

In fact, we had a crime occur in our own parking lot a few years ago. Someone brazenly broke into an employee’s vehicle and stole thousands of dollars worth of company photography equipment, plus a GPS unit and several personal items, including credit cards and ID.

We called police, who quickly responded, but our employee is still bothered by the fact that it happened. And because it was right in front of the building, in broad daylight, about mid-morning.
It felt like a personal attack, even though it most likely wasn’t.

To this day, that stolen property hasn’t been recovered.

We hope this new feature will be able to help get a few of those criminals off our streets.

Brian McLean is the editor of The Peninsula Gateway and the Herald in Puyallup. He can be reached at 253-853-9245 or by email at brian.mclean@gateline.com. Follow him on Twitter, @gateway_brian.