Police are urging people with new Christmas and Boxing Day sale valuables to get their serial numbers recorded.
Recording a serial number and being able to provide it to the police in the unfortunate event of theft allows them to record the item in their database as "stolen".
In a recent Hamilton burglary, the victim was able to provide police with a serial number for her laptop. During a search warrant on a property three days later, a laptop was found and the serial number was flagged in the database.
Residents can use snap.org.nz, an online tool that provides people with the ability to privately record serial numbers. Police have no access to any private details stored on the Snap website but, in the event of a burglary or theft, the owner is able to log in to the site, print their snap list and pass it to the police, who then record the details in their own database.
Snap also allows you to store photographs of rare items and belongings that do not have serial numbers.
