Property Crime Investigations Team

The Property Crime Investigations Team is primarily responsible for investigating theft related crimes. These crimes include residential, commercial and auto burglaries; thefts; vandalism; grand larceny; stolen property; fraud/forgeries; identity theft; arson; unlawful use and/or possession of explosives; and environmental crimes.

The team works closely with banks and other financial institutions to identify offenders and obtain evidence. These crimes include altering and forging checks, credit card fraud, identity theft and other fraud schemes.  Fraud includes a variety of forgeries such as passing a forged instrument, counterfeiting (on a variety of documents including credit cards), passing counterfeit currency, and unlawful use of financial transaction cards.

Over the past several years these crimes have been on a steady rise with identity theft, auto theft, and auto burglary having the largest increase. The Property Crime Investigations Team operates with six full-time detectives.  One of those detectives is primarily responsible for the investigation of auto theft related crime and is assigned to the Sonoma County Auto Theft Task Force (SONCATT).  One detective is assigned Graffiti related crimes and a third to environmental crimes.  The team is also staffed with a Graffiti Abatement Technician who is responsible for tracking and analyzing graffiti related crimes throughout the city.  

Additionally, follow-up investigations are conducted on stolen property located at pawn shops. Recent trends indicate growth over the past several years in the area of forgery and credit card cases involving multiple victims, and computer crimes stemming from identity theft. The Property Crime Investigations Team has three detectives designated to investigate burglary, theft, arson, credit card fraud, check forgery, identity theft, counterfeiting, and embezzlement crimes.