St. Petersburg's Police Department is calling on residents and businesses to lend a hand.



St. Petersburg Police are still looking for burglars and suspects all over the city. Lucky for the department, quite often crimes are caught on camera.

“It’s just helped us so many times,” said Lieutenant Paul McWade, St. Petersburg Police.

McWade and the St. Petersburg Police Department are calling on residents and business owners to register their surveillance cameras. The new initiative is called “Eagle Eye.”

The registry will help detectives quickly identify where the cameras are when a crime occurs.

“We can quickly make a call and say we had this crime occur in your neighborhood and we’d like to know if we can come out and look at the video,” said McWade.

St. Petersburg modeled its program after one in Philadelphia. Police there used a video of a kidnapping on a city street to rescue the victim and capture the suspect.

“We want to get as much information out to the public as fast we can possibly can,” said McWade.

Now it’s the department’s job to get residents like James and Barbara Goebel to register their cameras.

“The time, the date, the year that we live in, I mean everybody’s on camera some place if you don’t pay attention, but if police don’t know where it’s at what can they do with it?” said James Goebel, St. Petersburg resident.

Goebel’s cameras caught numerous neighborhood crimes over the years.

“Mainly just a piece of mind for me,” said Goebel.

St. Petersburg Police said if enough residents sign up it could change the way detectives fight crime in the city.

The St. Petersburg Police Department will not have direct access to the video from anyone’s surveillance cameras.

