Highlands Today
Highlands To Use Polk's Jail Playing Cards To Fight Crime
News Channel 8 image by JOE MARTIN
Heartland Crime Stoppers created this deck of playing cards listing information about unsolved cases and missing people.
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Published: March 19, 2008
SEBRING - Highlands County is dealing itself in on the crime-fighting cards that have been helping to solve cold cases in Polk County and elsewhere.
Heartland Crime Stoppers, which serves Polk, Highlands and Hardee counties, has produced its fourth deck of playing cards listing information about unsolved cases and missing people. This edition will be passed out to inmates at Highland County Jail and to Polk County inmates. For the first time, the deck includes 18 cases from Highlands County.
The decks are being distributed today, said Steve Newell, cold case investigator with the Highlands County Sheriff's Office. There are 1,500 included in the first giveaway. That's enough to give each inmate in the Highlands County Jail one deck that he or she can keep when they leave, Newell said. Thousands more will be provided to Polk County inmates.
The jail population in Highlands averages 450 to 500 people, Newell said.
The idea of highlighting cold cases on playing cards started in Polk County in 2005 with the county's cold case assessment team. The team was impressed with the playing cards the U.S. military used to highlight wanted members of Saddam Hussein's fallen regime.
Within a few months, an inmate provided a tip that led to solving the 2004 killing of Thomas Wayne Grammar, who had been featured on the three of spades
Polk Sheriff Grady Judd said it makes sense to add Highlands crimes to the deck because some of the same inmates move in and out of the Polk and Highlands jails
"We have noticed a trend of similar crimes between our two communities, and inmates from both counties spend time in both of our jails," Judd said. "What better way to reach out to these information sources to get some of the Highlands cold cases solved than to include them in our deck of inmate playing cards?"
The card concept has spread to the state prison system, with 100,000 decks with two sets of cases having been distributed to inmates.
The 104 cards can be seen on the Florida Department of Law Enforcement's Web site at www.fdle.state.fl.us. Florida is the first state to develop cold case cards on homicides and missing people and pass them out to state prison inmates, according to the state attorney general's office.
The state card system has helped solve cases in Lee and Manatee counties, according to a Polk sheriff's news release.
Reporter Billy Townsend can be reached at (863) 284-1409 or wtownsend@tampatrib.com.
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