GBPD using YouTube videos to try catching criminals

GREEN BAY - The Green Bay Police Department says it's trying a new approach to try to convince criminals to turn themselves in.

They're posting a weekly video on YouTube.

It's called Wheel of Warrants.

The police captain who created the video says he hopes it will catch the community's attention.

But is it working to catch the more than 1,100 outstanding misdemeanor offenders?

The Green Bay Police Department is taking a spin with a new community outreach video.

Captain Bill Bongle is the man behind the department's new YouTube video.

"We thought it would be a good thing to start putting out photos of the people with warrants. Just one day out of the blue I came up with the idea of a spinny wheel,” said Bongle.

Bongle says amateur videos have been his hobby. He and a community service intern used his home equipment to put this together.

In it, Bongle let a police department employee spin the wheel.

A criminal was selected.

"This week's winner is Sherry Decastro," Bongle announced in the video.

Bongle explains the people on this wheel are all wanted for misdemeanors. For instance, Sherry DeCastro's wanted on four warrants, including first offense drunken driving.

"Everybody knows these are serious situations that people are getting offenses for. We've tried other things without a lot of success. There are a lot of warrants out there and a lot of these people have not been held accountable,” said Bongle.

Bongle says all 1,100 of the department's outstanding warrants continue to be investigated. So has this featured woman been caught?

"We haven't heard anything about her, we assume that she is no longer in the area,” said Bongle.

Bongle says though no one's responded about this particular warrant, more than 1,000 people watched the video. Traffic on the police department's Facebook page has increased in the past week.

Bongle says his video has gotten national attention and will be featured on the Social Media in Law Enforcement, or SMILE, convention's website. We contacted area prosecutors and defense attorneys to see what they thought of this unique way of tracking down criminals.

Our requests were either not returned in time, or they had not seen the video.

Watch the first Wheel of Warrants video: