MASSACHUSETTS COMPUTER THEFT AN ISSUE AS LOCAL POLICE USING COMPUTERS MORE THAN EVER http://www.thesunchronicle.com/articles/2006/06/12/city/city4.txt

Classic TV cop dramas like `` Dragnet'' showed police patrolling the streets and interviewing suspects. Forty years later, `` Dragnet'' has become `` Internet.''

Police detectives are spending more time these days searching Web sites and search engines, and collecting anonymous tips by e-mail because computers are becoming a facet of almost every type of crime. Consider these examples just over the past month:

E Laptop computers holding personal data were stolen from the Providence YMCA and the Maryland home of a Department of Veterans Affairs analyst. The theft of computer hardware borders on old-fashioned crime, but what thieves can do with the information inside is decidedly high-tech.

E A Wrentham man was convicted of uploading the largest amount of child pornography ever logged by Yahoo!, the Internet service provider, according to the Norfolk County district attorney's office.

E Mansfield police joined a recent trend among area law enforcement agencies in holding an Internet safety forum for parents in the wake of growing concern about MySpace.com, the networking Web site that they say has become a magnet for predators.

The national Internet Crime Complaint Center last year processed 3,391 complaints from Massachusetts in 2005.

The top six complaint categories were: auction fraud, 64.9 percent; non-delivery of merchandise or payment, 15.4 percent; credit card fraud, 3.5 percent; check fraud, 2.4 percent;computer fraud, 2 percent; and confidence fraud, 1.8 percent.

The top dollar loss complaint involved action fraud, totaling $57,500.`` We're taking in a lot of computer crime. Even your traditional cases are beginning to involve computers,'' Mansfield police Detective Michael Ellsworth said. `` It's becoming a good part of our caseload.''

Ellsworth and Attleboro police Detective Sgt. Arthur Brillon said computers also are complementing patrol work by expediting the sharing of information and the pursuit of leads.

Brillon said Attleboro Detective James Cote used computer know-how to solve the theft of precious metal in a housebreak.

Information from the police report led Cote to query a Rhode Island database, which led him to an Ocean State pawn shop.

The pawn shop owner then matched the description of the stolen metal to an item in the shop database.

That led Cote to a suspect.

In short, the Internet saved the detective considerable wear and tear in shoe leather.

Ten years ago, Cote would have visited a city pawn shop and perhaps four or five other pawn shops in Rhode Island, Brillon said.

Still, Brillon said, `` I could never see less of a need for patrol time. The majority of crimes are stopped because of good leads and paperwork from police officers being out on the road.''

Nonetheless, Brillon and Ellsworth say the growth of computer crime has reallocated detectives' time.

E-mailing mug shots is quicker than hand-delivering photos to police departments in other communities.And digital directories give police access to more phone numbers than the local Yellow Pages.

`` You can certainly get a lot of legwork done over the Internet in any type of investigation,'' Ellsworth said.And, police are increasingly are finding computers to be a treasure-trove of information when investigating suspects of all stripes.

`` The first thing we are going for are the computers because there's probably going to be a wealth of knowledge on the computers,'' Brillon said.

Runaway technology can be a double-edged sword, however.`` We can't keep up with the equipment these perpetrators are using,'' Brillon said. `` They're using cutting-edge equipment.''

As a result, technology will consume more and more of police budgets.

`` A computer here is no longer a luxury. It's a necessity,'' Ellsworth said. `` In the future, the kids coming on the job will have the basic knowledge that's needed to begin this sort of investigation.''

In the meantime, local police offset their technological shortcomings by networking.

Ellsworth serves on the 43-member Metropolitan Law Enforcement Council's Computer Crime Unit, a group of law enforcement personnel in Southeastern Massachusetts who share data and resources.

`` The computer geeks in the police department like to share,'' Ellsworth said.