What is Operation Property Identification?

Operation Property Identification is a citizen's property recovery program. It promotes recording information about your belongings to aid law enforcement in recovery should items ever be stolen.

What Can I Do?

Your part is easy and simple; all you have to do is record descriptions of your property on the Household Inventory Form and keep it in a safe place, such as a locked file cabinet or safe deposit box.  Do not bring your form to the Police Department.  If your property is stolen, you will be able to provide the form with the information about the stolen items to the Sanford Police Department. For any items that do not have serial numbers such as jewelry, you should take photographs and store them with the inventory form.

What Does Sanford Police Department Do?

Information about stolen property is entered into a national computer database known as the National Crime Information Center (NCIC). NCIC is a computerized index of criminal justice information (i.e.- criminal record history information, fugitives, stolen properties, missing persons). It is available to federal, state, and local law enforcement and other criminal justice agencies and is operational 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. When an item is found, it can be checked for a stolen status with items listed in the NCIC database.

Another valuable avenue of recovery is with pawn shops. Local pawnbrokers routinely provide the Sanford Police Department information about items pawned including serial numbers. They are also required to obtain government-issued photographic identification of individuals who pawn property and provide that information to the Sanford Police Department along with the items pawned.

Items reported pawned to the Sanford Police Department by pawnbrokers are routinely checked against items reported stolen in the NCIC database.

Household Inventory Form