Crime doesn’t stay inside the lines, and police have a web of communication to catch criminal suspects when they cross city, parish or state borders.The National Crime Information Center serves as a network for law enforcement agencies, including the LSU and Baton Rouge police departments, to communicate with other departments around the country.Sgt. Blake Tabor, LSUPD spokesman, said the database is essential for every detail about a case to be communicated to relevant agencies.”NCIC is so important because it prompts you to load every tidbit of information that, from human error, may not be passed along and could be critical in any case,” Tabor said.The database is often useful in identifying outstanding warrants suspects may have from places outside an agency’s jurisdiction, Tabor said.BRPD checks every person with whom they come into contact on NCIC, said Cpl. L’Jean McKneely, BRPD spokesman.”When we contact an individual, we check the NCIC and see if they’re wanted throughout the state, wanted in another city in the country or have a local warrant,” McKneely said. “It’s a routine check that we do, especially if we’re about to make an arrest.”When a warrant is identified, the police contact the agency where the warrant originated and find out if the charge is important enough to extradite, or transfer, the suspect to the other department, McKneely said.Tabor said LSUPD contacts other agencies via teletype, which is similar to an e-mail and can be read within minutes by officers who monitor the database at all times.The decision on whether to extradite a suspect is typically based on how severe the charge is.For instance, a California agency may choose not to extradite a California resident arrested on campus with an outstanding warranty for issuing worthless checks, Tabor said. The crime is not severe enough to justify the cost of traveling to retrieve the suspect, he said.The NCIC can also be used to tag stolen property. But the property must be specifically identified to be entered in the database.The identification can be a serial number for products, such as a Blu-ray player, or a VIN for a vehicle, Tabor said. The specific numbers separate the exact stolen property from similar products.”If we had a situation where we put an Apple iPhone [into the database] without a serial number, hundreds of iPhones could potentially come back,” Tabor said.LSUPD uses the NCIC frequently, Tabor said. McKneely said the same is true for BRPD.”It’s a tool we use every day, many times a day,” McKneely said. “It’s very valuable.”—-Contact Ryan Buxton at [email protected]