Crimes often take place in areas where a criminal believes their activities will go unnoticed. It only makes sense that they would try to operate in the shadows. This is why businesses have traditionally relied on footage from closed circuit tv monitors to detect, deter and identify criminal actors. As technology has advanced, there has been a widespread proliferation of private security cameras made available to the general public at a very reasonable cost. Quite often a criminal is captured on video entering or leaving a particular area where a crime has been committed. Sometimes a criminal act itself is recorded on one of these types of devices. With this in mind, the West Lampeter Township Police Department is starting a voluntary camera registry program. The goal of the camera registry program is to deter crime and promote public safety through a collaboration between the West Lampeter Township Police Department and the community we serve. We are asking the public to voluntarily register their camera locations using the form on our Crimewatch website. When investigating a crime, the registry will allow our officers to review a map and determine where private cameras are located that may offer valuable information. We would then contact the owners of the camera to determine if their camera contains usable video footage. 

We cannot stress this enough; This registry is meant to give us a lead, but it is most definitely not to be utilized as a live feed. Under no circumstances will the West Lampeter Township Police Department use any information obtained in the registry to view footage/feeds directly from the cameras owned by registrants. It is merely one more investigative tool to aid us in solving and preventing criminal activity. The registry is free and the data and location of the cameras can only be seen by our officers.  Please join us in this effort to ensure a safer community.