Net Detectives

Did you hear about the spate of distraction burglaries in Huntingbridge? Criminals were targeting the homes of older people and offering services at the door. It was all pretence of course because whilst the home owner was talking at the door, an accomplice was burgling the property.

Fortunately, it all turned out well. Children in schools in the UK and abroad were working on-line with police and trading standards officers. They spotted a pattern in the crime figures for the past couple of months and were able to target resources where they thought the next burglaries would take place. Their intuitions were correct and the criminals were apprehended - a very satisfying outcome.

If you missed the story in your local press, don't be dismayed because the events described didn't actually happen - at least not in Huntingbridge although similar crimes occur all over the world on a daily basis. Huntingbridge itself doesn't exist although for those who regularly work on a series of events known as Net Detectives it has taken on a reality which is hard to shake off. There's even an Ordnance Survey map of the town and of the area in which it is situated.

Those who live in Cambridgeshire in the UK may just spot a certain similarity to their own locality and may even recognise the streets of Huntingdon, although the street names will seem strange. This is because Net Detectives is an exceptional on-line resource which was created by David Casey, formerly of Cambridgeshire Police. Huntingbridge is a fictional town based on David's real home town of Huntingdon.

It all started in the mid 1980s when David was schools liaison officer for Cambridgeshire Police. David was introduced to an early email system and immediately spotted an opportunity for police officers to communicate with children using the new medium. His first idea was to run a series of "Ask the police" days in which children in the few schools which used email in those days could send questions to police officers and receive live email answers.

As the Internet expanded into our lives and made email an everyday thing, David's idea grew into an activity called Superhighway Patrol in which a series of emails bring information about an unfolding story - often a crime but sometimes a road traffic accident, a fire or other incident. As the story unfolds, the children can email questions to real police officers in the "control room".

This is the story behind the distraction burglaries in Huntingbridge. It's the latest in a long series of incidents which have been investigated by children in Cambridgeshire schools. If the local community beat officer can visit the school on the day of the event, relationships can be forged in a few hours which might take years of normal classroom "chats". And because the idea is so good, schools from across the UK and also Austria, Germany and the Czech Republic have all joined in on a regular basis.

In 2001, Superhighway Patrol received a prestigious Cable and Wireless Childnet award and in 2002, the Mayor of Rome, Mr Walter Veltroni, presented David Casey with a Junior Global Challenge award. The Junior Global Challenge is an International Challenge to promote the opportunities that Information Technology provides and Childnet is a charity which aims to seek out and promote all that is educationally good on the Internet - a welcome change from the paranoia of the press.