Suspect Info

When it comes to finding a wanted suspect law- enforcement often relies on the media to help get the word out and spread awareness.

When it comes to finding a wanted suspect... law- enforcement often relies on the media to help get the word out and spread awareness... our quentin smith speaks with a local police chief about utilizing the media as tool to help them track down the bad guys.

He's joining us now in the studio..

So quentin, is this a successful strategy for cpd?

Yea joey chief fred shelton says it's very successful... in fact, shelton says a story that aired on our newscast today helped them identify a person of interest in an assault case they're investigating... the department is also asking for the public's help finding corey rice who's wanted for an aggravated assault charge.

The chief says putting a suspect's name and photo out there can put pressure on the person to turn themselves in.

Nat whether it's a picture.... or surveillance video.... when it comes to catching the bad guys, chief fred shelton says he relies on the media to help alert the public about what's going on... "the media can get out information quicker than we can.

When you do a news cast there are thousands of viewers that's watching, and surely as small as columbus is somebody is going to see that person or know that person, and they're going to give us a call."

The chief says it's a successful strategy.

In fact, on tuesday morning wcbi was given this security cam footage showing a person accused in an assault.

Now police are one step closer to tracking down the suspect.

" this weekend we had a business owner who was assaulted on his property.

We gave that video to the news media and today i'm happy to say that we have a person of interest based on someone seeing the face and recognizing who the person was.

They called and we were able to get that information, now we're looking for that person and hopefully we'll be able to make an arrest sometime today."

When it comes to releasing information about an alleged crime or person... shelton says it's important to be very descriptive.

" if the person may be armed and dangerous certainly we want put that out there.

We want to put out the physical description of the person, what kind of clothes they were wearing, how tall they are, we want to talk about the vehicle description that they are in, if it was a four-door car or a two door car, if it was a truck or an suv."

It's common for someone who's accused of a crime to try and dodge law enforcement.

That's why the chief says releasing their identity to the public will often help solve that problem.

"if i'm walking into a store and i see my picture on the tv, i'm going to say, oh my goodness.

That's very helpful.

If they're not so inclined to do it and they are trying to hide, there are people that's going to see it and they are going to pick up the phone and call."

Shelton says they're still searching for 32 year old corey rice.

He's accused of shooting someone back in april..

If anyone has information on his whereabouts or information on any crime or incident that's happened in columbus, you're asked to call 911 or golden triangle crime stoppers take continuing coverage stinger