Various businesses in downtown Madison, particularly on State Street, are using an online database service to share information about suspicious and rowdy customers more easily.
The service, provided by the Financial and Retail Protection Association, aims at fighting retail property crimes, from shoplifting to armed robbery.
""Informally, what retailers do now, is we exchange information, but there's no system involved,"" owner of Madison Sole Jeanette Riechers said. ""Having this system makes it more efficient; we can be on the offense as well as the defense.""
Business retailers can post a suspicious person on the database for their business counterparts to see. Business retailers also having the ability to perform searches for various suspicious persons.
Riechers never felt the need to install cameras until a series of incidents occurred recently, but she said, ""cameras only help after the fact, not before the fact.""
""If we knew what was going on up and down the street we would know before the fact and convey that to our employees, print out pictures and be much better prepared,"" Riechers said.
""It's all power of numbers,"" president of Fontana Sports Specialties John Hutchinson said. ""The more people who get involved and active in it, the more effective [the database] will be.""
