Ogden police service warns of burglary, other crime trends

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OGDEN — A recent spike in the burglary of unlocked homes prompted Ogden police to send out an alert.

With the police department’s CyberWatch program, citizens can sign up to receive emails from the Real Time Crime Center when suspicious activities occur near their home or business. A notification sent Feb. 23 warned residents to keep their doors and garages locked.

A map shows the locations of the burglaries and includes information about how the thieves gained entry to the buildings, as well as the value of the items that were stolen. Since sending out the email, the department has received numerous tips from citizens, according to Ogden police deputy director of administration John Harvey.

“If you think about how police solve crimes, it’s not because we roll up on it, usually. It’s because someone has told us something, so it makes sense to push a little information out to the public to let them know what has been happening in a close proximity to their home or business,” he said. “They tend to be a little more attentive to what is going on and report back.”


If you think about how police solve crimes, it's not because we roll up on it, usually.

–John Harvey, deputy director of administration


Harvey developed the CyberWatch program while he was with the Memphis Police Department. The email notification system launched in 2014, and so far about 500 people have signed up for the service, he said.

The goal of the program is to make the public more aware of what is happening around them. Recently, another alert was sent out after a substantial number of people had their cars stolen when they left the vehicles running while unattended.

“If we get information about anything that is suspicious in a given area we have the ability to send that email,” Harvey said. “We can target it to a certain location or radius. (We) pick a center point on the map and tell it we want to send it to everybody who is within a half mile of that, or however we want to do it.”

People can sign up for the notifications online.

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Natalie Crofts

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