Nerds needed

The discovery of Jaycee Dugard after nineteen years happened in an office. Two police officers (o.k., reading between the lines, Lisa Campbell is apparently not a sworn officer, but whatever) left their bullshit detectors running, and Phillip Garrido would have set off even a fully squelched bullshit detector. They were tech savvy enough to confirm immediately that Garrido warranted scrutiny.

None of the many law enforcement personnel who went to Phillip and Nancy Garrido's doorstep over those nineteen years discovered Jaycee because they were insufficiently informed and insufficiently suspicious. They never looked at the extent of his backyard. Here's a property record they could have pulled up from their very own city's geographical information system:


This is basic preparatory information that I found in less than 30 minutes, despite the crudeness of Antioch's search function. Don't cops all have laptops in their patrol cars? Don't parole officers have access to the Internet?

Armed with this plat and with the fact that Garrido was a registered and paroled serious sex offender, law enforcement could have taken neighbor reports seriously enough to really look into all the blue tarps and sheds.

There's a wealth of information on the web that could help prevent law enforcement errors. (Think, never enter the wrong house to execute a warrant again!) What we need are more nerds in any position that requires access to information.