Toms River, Ocean County Thieves Will Find It Tougher To Get Quick Cash For Heroin Fix

As heroin has swept through Ocean County, it has brought with it a surge in property crimes. Home burglaries have become more frequent, as have cases of shoplifting, as drug users look for items to steal that can be sold for cash to support their habits.

“Minor thefts have exploded,” Ocean County Prosecutor Joseph D. Coronato said Tuesday at the Ocean County Fire and EMS Center in Waretown. Drug addiction is very expensive, and to feed the habit, most addicts become “either dealers or stealers,” he said.

Thieves take the stolen property to pawn shops or other places that buy secondhand items for a quick influx of cash for their next fix. Trying to find stolen property and return it to its rightful owners, while at the same time finding the person responsible, has been a difficult task.

“In the past, you would check the pawn shops, but you’d have to go back and check them again because the thief may not have pawned it right away,” said Thomas Preiser, chief of police in Harvey Cedars and president of the Ocean County Police Chiefs Association.

In an effort to fight back, the prosecutor’s office brought together law enforcement personnel from all of the county’s municipalities as it prepares to roll out a computerized database that will make it easier for police to trace stolen property and more difficult for thieves to sell those items in the first place.

The Regional Automated Property Information Database -- RAPID for short -- will connect not only law enforcement but pawn shops as well, Coronato said.

The program already is in use in Maryland and Delaware, as well as Atlantic City, Coronato said, and he hopes the rest of the state will follow Ocean County’s lead.

Places that deal in secondhand items -- including places like GameStop, which buys and sells previously owned video games, and places that offer cash for gold, and scrap metal dealers -- will be able to log information on items they receive. Police officers then will be able to search that database for items that may match ones reported stolen.

Because laws require secondhand sellers to maintain detailed, specific records on items they purchase from individuals -- including requiring a government-issued photo ID and a thumbprint from the seller, serial numbers on the items taken, and more -- tracking down thieves will become easier.

And it will make it more difficult for thieves to get a quick fix by stealing an item and pawning it, Coronato said, because they will be forced to drive farther and farther to do so.

Detectives and personnel from all of the county’s municipalities as 35 jurisdictions outside Ocean County attended a seminar on RAPID on Tuesday at the training center in Waretown. Approximately 25 jurisdictions in the state already participate in the database program, the prosecutor’s office said.

By implementing the program countywide, “everyone will be speaking the same language,” Coronato said. So if someone steals a Keurig from JCPenney at the Ocean County Mall, returns it at Kohl’s in Brick for a $100 gift card, then tries to pawn the Kohl’s gift card in Lakewood, it becomes easier to trace, because every agency is connected, he said.

He hopes that not only the rest of New Jersey, but its neighbors, Pennsylvania and New York, will join in the RAPID program, “making it truly regional.”

“If you can’t go to Delaware, and you can’t go to Pennsylvania, and you can’t drive to New York to sell items, where are you going to go?” he said.

It becomes another prong in the battle against drugs in the county.

“We’re doing a systematic approach,” he said, with education about the dangers of drug use in schools; public forums on the issue such as the awareness event at Ocean County Mall last weekend; prescription drug collection programs like the one held at the BlueClaws’ game Tuesday night, and an increasing focus on strict liability, where dealers are being charged in overdose deaths.

“This is just another tool in the toolbox,” Coronato said.

(PHOTO: Law enforcement personnel listen to an explanation of errors and omissions that help revealt pawn shop transactions that might be stolen items during a course at the Ocean County Fire & EMS training center in Waretown on Tuesday. Credit: Karen Wall)