District Attorney Stephanie Vettenburg-Shaffer reaches out to residents asking for their help as community partners.  More and more people have security cameras on the outside of their homes.  These cameras have become extremely valuable in many cases – from capturing an automobile crash to capturing evidence of a homicide.  Anyone following the Nancy Guthrie missing person’s case in Arizona sees how her camera may ultimately solve her disappearance.

It would be helpful for police to know where neighborhood cameras are before a serious crime occurs.  We are trying to determine where cameras are in our county so that we save critical hours locating them in the event of a crime, particularly when many cameras record over their own footage after a few days. 

This option of registering your camera at your home or business is completely voluntary and does not allow the police to access the footage. Registering merely lets the officers know who to contact to ask about any footage if a crime occurs in that vicinity.  If a crime occurs in the vicinity, the officers will ask you if you would be willing to check and share your footage. 

Many critical hours are spent by police going door-to-door to find out who in the vicinity of a crime has a camera on the outside of their house that may have captured something. There have been many times when residents have contacted police when they hear of a crime that occurred in the area of their home and notified them of the presence of a camera. But there are more times when the resident does not know of an active investigation where they would think of calling police. 

For anyone interested in helping, we are asking you to register the location of your camera by going to our Crimewatch page at McKeanDA.org.  Click on the “Prevention & Awareness” tab and click on “Camera Registry” from the drop-down list.  From there, you can fill out the information so that officers know the vicinity of your camera. Again, registering your camera only lets police know that you have a camera in a particular location. 

The goal of the camera’s registry program is to deter crime and promote public safety through collaboration between the McKean County District Attorney’s Office and the community we serve. If anyone has questions, please call the District Attorney’s Office at (814) 887-3312.