[We] received reports of an unknown subject using employees at retail outlets connected to banks to cash forged checks. The subject was then laundering the money using various methods. All that was available was a physical description and partial vehicle plate, along with several aliases used in the course of the forgeries. [Our] investigators inputted the available information into Lumen and located a suspect. Once a suspect was identified, Lumen was used to put together a list of associates and develop a quick history of incidents involving the group in the metro area, which ultimately lead to criminal charges. Losses at ONE location were over $40,000 and the group has been active all over the metro area for over a year. — Agent

We were tasked to find an individual at his home.  The address we got was old, however, and he no longer lived there.  A quick Lumen search from my MDC for his name showed me that he had a different address, but it only showed up in a narrative and had not been updated in his master name record.  Thanks to Lumen, we were able to track him down. — Patrol Officer

“We were working on a domestic violence case with a stolen handgun. According to the victim, the suspect put the stolen handgun in the victim’s mouth and pulled the trigger, but luckily, the gun did not fire. We knew the circumstances surrounding the theft of the handgun but did not know the specific case. I searched Lumen for cases involving some of the specifics of the case and within 30 seconds I was reading the theft case report from another agency. This allowed us to validate the victim’s side of the domestic violence story, help another agency solve a weapons theft, and charge a suspect.” — Crime Analyst

I was working a graffiti case where the same tag had been seen repeatedly across the city. With Lumen, I was able to do a search for the tag and instantly see all of the incidents where it showed up. Reading through the results in Lumen, I figured out that an officer on an unrelated case had actually made contact with what was most likely our guy – his roommate mentioned that he was a tagger and even told the officer his tag. With that one search, we were able to close 36 cases. I even called up two other agencies whose cases showed up in my Lumen search and they were able to close out their cases also. This would have been impossible without Lumen. — Police Detective

“I received a request for some crime statistics with no notice and a few hours deadline. I was able to use Lumen to compile and submit those statistics in less than two hours. It would have been much faster if the query had already been built.” — Crime Analyst

“Found information on a person that was critical to solving a problem. Without Lumen the problem would never have been resolved.” — Sergeant