Metro police to team up against flat-screen TV thefts

Atlanta police and other local law enforcement agencies are setting up a task force to investigate burglaries of flat-screen televisions, Police Chief Richard Pennington said Wednesday.

The task force, created about three weeks ago, will include the East Point and Fulton County police departments and the Fulton County Sheriff’s Department. Police have also asked departments from other counties, such as DeKalb and Cobb, to join.

“Rather than us do it in-house, we decided to reach out to surrounding jurisdictions,” Pennington said. “Because we know they’re having the same problems.”

Pennington spoke to the media Wednesday, the second day of an annual three-day training workshop. Law enforcement experts from around the country came to Atlanta to share information on how they’ve dealt with certain crime trends.

Pennington said he’s optimistic other solutions to cut down on home break-ins will grow out of the workshop. One idea caught the chief’s eye: using DNA to solve property crimes. “That’s something that we had never thought of,” Pennington said.

The chief also said he hoped the workshop would help the department “get more bang for our buck” with its resources, referring to a recent 10 percent cut in police services due to citywide furloughs.

The burglary task force is similar to one created last year to focus on thefts of designer blue jeans, which police credit for cutting down on such crimes.

Atlanta police leaked word of the multi-jurisdictional task force at a town hall meeting late last month in southwest Atlanta. At the time it was going to be focused on that section of the city — which has been hit the hardest by house burglaries — and other parts of south Fulton County.

The department decided to make it a citywide effort and bring in other agencies.

“Everybody’s having similar problems,” Atlanta police Maj. Debra A. Williams said.

About 25 Atlanta police officers or investigators are assigned to the task force, including an officer from each of the six police zones in the city and the entire gang enforcement unit, Williams said.

The group, which will meet every other Thursday, will pinpoint neighborhoods in the county that have the heaviest number of burglaries and try to identify those involved in the crimes, through surveillance, undercover decoys and other police tactics, Williams said.