Electronic billboards post fugitive alerts

The billboards already have produced positive results, officials said.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Fugitives, beware: The FBI is making your face a roadside alert.

No longer relying on Web sites and post offices to display its “Wanted” posters, the FBI has turned to posting the mugs of criminals on the run on electronic billboards along highways in 20 major U.S. cities.

“It’s just a wonderful outlet for us,” said FBI spokesman Ernest J. Porter. “Our Web site gets millions of hits a month, but this also gives us the added benefit of [reaching] someone just commuting to work, or out shopping.”

The billboards — which will show the fugitives’ faces on a rotating basis for up to two minutes at a time — are the brainchild of Clear Channel Communications. The company offered to donate the space on its existing billboards late last year, Porter said.

This week, billboards in several cities posted the alert for Marine Cpl. Cesar Armando Laurean, now believed to be in Mexico after becoming a key suspect in the slaying of a pregnant Marine.

The billboards already have spurred tipsters in some cities to call in alerts to the FBI with potential sightings.

In Las Vegas, for example, a tipster reported recognizing an attempted murder suspect near a local Target store after seeing his face on one of the billboards. FBI agents nabbed the suspect by other means, but agreed that the tipster had probably fingered the right guy.

“We can’t definitively say the calls that came in helped capture him, but they certainly identified him, and were right on because of where we did find the subject,” said David Staretz, legal counsel for the FBI’s field office in Las Vegas.

“It’s just a great additional investigative tool to use,” Staretz said.

The cities where Clear Channel is posting the FBI alerts on their billboards are: Akron, Ohio; Albuquerque, N.M.; Atlanta; Chicago; Cleveland; Columbus, Ohio; Des Moines, Iowa; El Paso, Texas; Indianapolis; Las Vegas; Los Angeles; Memphis, Tenn.; Miami; Milwaukee, Wis.; Minneapolis, Minn.; Newark, N.J.; Orlando, Fla.; Philadelphia; Tampa, Fla.; and Wichita, Kan.