ACTION Project
Initial meeting of representatives from California ACTION, and Florida’s
Office of Agricultural Law Enforcement The Agricultural Crime Technology Information and Operations Network (ACTION) program is being developed to track agricultural related crimes within the state, and allow the information to be shared between agencies in all 67 Florida counties.
The original program was the “brain child” of the Tulare County California, District Attorney Phillip J. Cline. ACTION was developed when Mr. Cline realized, during conversations with the local Sheriff, that agricultural-related crimes were not tracked nor was information shared between county agencies. In Tulare County, agriculture is the number one commodity, where ranchers and farmers produce $3.2 billion dollars in agricultural related products.
Colonel Darrell Liford and Lt. Col. Lou Leinhauser of Agricultural Law Enforcement saw a demonstration of the ACTION program in 2002, and with the blessing of Agricultural Commissioner Charles Bronson, asked the California group to work with the Florida Department of Agriculture on a similar program for our state.
In June of 2004, a group from Florida Department of Agriculture traveled to California to work with the staff of the existing program, in order to understand how the system was working in California and to begin the process of implementing ACTION – East in Florida.
The ACTION program assists farmers and ranchers when a crime is committed
against their lively hood. In addition to assisting law enforcement, the
ACTION program offers a simple crime deterrent to the ranchers and farmers
called the OAN, Owner Applied Number. An internet-based program, developed
by the ACTION staff, is available free of charge to any person who has
access to the internet. Ranchers and farmers who wish to participate simply
enter into the database information concerning their farm equipment. Each
piece of equipment is assigned a number, and that number is placed on
a discreet
location on the equipment. Photographs may be taken of the equipment and
placed in the computer files as well.
Members of the ACTION staff make contact with farmers who are new to the system, and offer assistance in the form of metal etching, proper OAN placement and access to a digital camera. The purpose of this is so that in the event the equipment is stolen, and later recovered, the information obtained from the OAN database will assist law enforcement in locating the owner of the equipment.
Participating agencies in ACTION send representatives to regular meetings to share information on the most recent agricultural crimes in their area, and offer expertise in various areas of Ag law enforcement.
The California ACTION group agreed to help Florida set up the same system, and in the very near future, we will have our own Florida ACTION database. We will be soliciting assistance from local Sheriff’s Offices in obtaining agricultural crime data which we will begin entering into a Florida database. Once we have enough data to share, AgLaw will contact law enforcement agencies within the state, and begin developing a state network of our own.
Initially, we are working with the team in California to develop our own database which will be run through the ACTION network in California. It is our goal to have our own ACTION-East program, housed here in the Office of Agricultural Law Enforcement, with a dedicated, in-house computer network. Shortly, we will begin scheduling meetings with agricultural law related associations to network and share the ACTION program.
It has taken the ACTION team in California approximately three (3) years build the system they have today, so we do not anticipate our program will be fully operational until sometime in 2005. We are working hard to build the database and the ACTION program to be a valuable tool in order to more efficiently fight agricultural crime within Florida.
