Ted Lingenheld says he is a consultant but he might want to add to his business card "squeaky wheel," as in the one who gets the oil.

Lingenheld, a 63-year-old resident of the Banbury Woods subdivision in northern Wake -- outside city limits -- called this week to ask why the North Raleigh News section does not include crime reports outside of Raleigh in our weekly Police Reports. (It's on page 9N today.)

He is not the first to make that complaint. Northern Wake is fast-growing and crime -- though hardly rampant -- is something to be aware of. Lingenheld's complaint arose from a series of vehicle break-ins in his neighborhood in January.

Most in the neighborhood did not know about the break-ins, Lingenheld said, because the crimes got no media coverage at all, as far as he could tell.

The problem, I explained to him -- as I have explained to a lot of other callers who have made the same complaint -- is that crime reports from inside Raleigh and outside city limits come from two different police agencies.

We get information about Raleigh crimes from the Raleigh Police Department. Crime reports from outside city limits come from the Wake Sheriff's Office.

The Sheriff's Office is not unhelpful, but traditionally the information they have supplied to us has not been as user-friendly as Raleigh's crime reports. County reports are not sorted by location, which means digging through piles and piles of reports from throughout the county.

I once asked a North Raleigh News staff member how she felt about taking on that task and her reaction was, "I'd rather not." Actually, it was a bit stronger, but this is a family newspaper.

Still, when Lingenheld complained, I thought I'd try one more time to solve this problem. I called Phyllis Stephens, public information officer for the Wake Sheriff's Office to see if, through technological improvements or some other means, the impossible had now become possible.

Stephens consulted with a Sheriff's Office computer expert and later said there's a potential solution -- there might be a way to generate reports sorted by location.

The details still have to be worked out, so we'll see what happens. But I want y'all to know that I'm working on this.

I'll keep you posted.

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