Bluffton police using new microdot technology to help find stolen property
Bluffton police will have a new ally in helping reunite lost or stolen property with its owner -- a microscopic tag the company's president compared to "DNA for your personal property."
The police department is one of the early adopters of ProTech DNA, a new product that allows users to affix a microdot smaller than a grain of sand to valuable property as an invisible identifier in case it is lost or stolen. The microdot carries a unique number that can be used to identify property, just as a police department would use DNA to identify a person in an investigation.
The microdot uses a water-based adhesive and can be attached to most solid objects, such as a phone or bicycle. Users can then enter information about those items -- such as serial numbers, unique identifying information, and where the microdot was placed -- into a database accessible to police agencies who have collaborated with ProTech DNA.
The information is not mandatory to enter, but the more information given, the easier it is to identify the property, he said.
ProTech DNA president Shawn Andreas said the company was founded five years ago in the hope of finding a better, more uniform way to identify stolen property.
Police departments used to urge people to engrave their valuables with an identifier, sometimes using personal information like driver's license or Social Security numbers that they no longer would want out in the open, he said. Beyond the obvious privacy issues with engraving important personal information, the changes in license number formats state-to-state would make it difficult in some situations for the engraving to be recognized.
Andreas said he used to keep serial numbers of important valuables in envelopes, but they would quickly be forgotten and lost, making the point of saving them moot.
The company found a solution to the problem in the microdot, he said. The small discs were first used for espionage purposes in World War I and World War II to pass information behind enemy lines, Andreas said.
The microdots are visible under a blacklight, but they require a magnifier to read the unique number in each microdot.
ProTech has worked with police departments to tie the microdot database into the department's computer systems. That way, when an item reported missing or stolen is found, the department's computer system can search the database to find a match, Andreas said.
The more information is entered into the database, the easier it is to identify recovered property. For example, if a bicycle with a microdot is reported stolen and recovered, the department's computer system will "scrub" the tied-in ProTech database, Andreas said. If a serial number for the bicycle was entered, the department's computer system will be able to 100 percent match the recovered bicycle to its owner, he said.
Andreas said about 2,500 police agencies have adopted the technology nationally.
By the first quarter of 2016, the company will have one or multiple agencies in every state using the technology, he said. The Bluffton Police Department is the first in South Carolina to adopt the technology.
Local residents don't have to travel far from the police department to purchase the microdots. ProTech DNA packages retail for $35 at the Buckwalter Place ACE Hardware store. Each pack contains enough microdots to mark 75 to 100 items, Andreas said.
Bluffton may figure to be one of the more prominent locations using the new technology. Andreas said Friday he was struck by police chief Joey Reynolds and his "outside the box thinking" to quickly adopt the technology.
While many of the agencies around the country are moving to adopt ProTech DNA as a means to address statistical crime issues, Reynolds and the Bluffton police are "forward thinking" in using it early as a means to prevent crime, Andreas said. The town will likely be one of the communities featured in upcoming profiles about the new company, he said.
For now, Bluffton police are working to spread the word about the new technology. As more kits are bought, officers will begin meeting with local property owners associations to explain how they work and show residents how to enter them into the database, Bluffton Police Department public information officer Joy Nelson said.
Follow reporter Matt McNab at twitter.com/IPBG_Matt.
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This story was originally published December 18, 2015 at 5:57 PM with the headline "Bluffton police using new microdot technology to help find stolen property."