Smith County, Texas Constable's Office

Summary

Located in its northeast region, Smith County is the 25th most populous county in Texas. In addition to sheriff and local police departments, the county is policed by five constables and their subordinates. In June 2006, John Smith was appointed as Smith County Constable serving the fourth precinct. Upon taking office, he encountered a challenging workload, including thousands of outstanding warrants for the arrest of writers of bad checks.

Challenge

• Smith County was experiencing an acute problem with people writing bad checks, with boxes of unsolved cases dating back to the 1980s.
• Tracking down bad check writers was difficult since the county has a highly transient population due to several nearby universities.
• Resources—time, manpower and money―required to locate these individuals were not available.
• Officials had to resolve the bad check problem in their area, while remaining focused on more pressing responsibilities.

Solution

• Leverage a specialized investigative solution known as LexisNexis® Accurint® for Law Enforcement.
• Organize and archive all bad checks.
• Use driver’s license information captured at the time the check was written as the basis for an Accurint® search.
• In cases without driver’s license information, search Accurint® using last name and first initial.

Results

• Identified and located check writers in 95 percent of Accurint® searches using driver’s license information, even with checks written decades earlier and authors that moved to another state.
• Collected more than $140,000 to date since deploying Accurint®, and currently $8,000 per week, from the authors of bad checks.
• Preserve resources and reallocate them toward more pressing criminal investigations.