Law enforcement using UPC barcode to find a suspect

Factual Questions
1

I let me say up front that I saw this on one of those ‘reality’ shows about game wardens, so my source material is questionable at best.

In the show, they find an arrow used by a poacher. The arrow still had the UPC barcode on it. They allegedly used this barcode to find the store where this arrow was purchased, and further traced the date and time of the transaction to find the poacher. They confronted him at his home with a copy of the receipt and talked him into a corner when he said he had all three arrows he had purchased, but GOTCHA he had bought four that day.

I looked at my wife and said that was BS, there isn’t enough data storage space in a UPC barcode to have individual item serial numbers even if you wanted do so. In looking it up, appears that UPC barcodes max out at 20 characters. And that is generally taken up with manufacturer and item number.

So lets just assume that everything beyond this arrow being sold at this store was the result of police work that was edited out of the show. Is it possible that the claim about tracing to UPC to a particular store is true?

The only way I can envision it, is since arrows don’t have a place for a UPC barcode to appear like a cereal box, or a paper back book, that the UPC code was printed on a sticker that was affixed to the arrow. Maybe the retailer themselves even printed the sticker and also put the store name on the sticker. That way, the UPC code was actually irrelevant, it could have been a sticker saying “Hogan’s Hunting Supplies, Arrows $5 each.” And all the rest was just regular police work (Go to Hogan’s, ask them how many of that particular arrow they sell, review all sales of that arrow, etc. etc.) Just seems odd for a show about law enforcement to dismiss good police work and assign credit to technology.

The show definitely presented it as if the UPC barcode was what lead them to the retailer. What do you think?

-rainy

2

Some stores print inventory tags that are in effect serial numbers. They are bar-coded, but they aren’t UPC bar codes. Those are scanned at purchase time and even if the printed receipt doesn’t show all the details, the retailer’s internal records might.

It’d be real easy for a TV show to lose the distinction. UPC codes are printed as bar codes. But not all printed bar codes are UPC.

Overall I agree that for a low-value item like an arrow that’s not required by law to be individually tracked, I’d be very surprised to find any retailer using such stickers and codes.

So overall I agree with your BS-meter here.

3

I work with a number of barcoding systems and LSLGuy is correct. There are bar codes that can encode almost any data that you want including date and place of manufacture, lot numbers, serial numbers etc. but simple UPC barcodes do not have that capability. UPC barcodes (also known as GTIN for Global Trade Item Number) only contains 12 digits and one of those is a check digit. The only information it stores is the company prefix followed by the item number.

The newer 2D barcoding standards can store a lot more information than a UPC but it doesn’t sound like you are referring to those.

4

Manufacturers will often create a unique model number for a specific large-volume customer, e.g. Walmart. This model is frequently identical or near-identical to another existing model. This is done as an underhanded way to fuck customers out of “price-matching” policies.

If the arrow the police found was one of these uniquely-numbered models they can trace it back to Walmart, and if there’s only one or two Walmart’s in the area, they can check those stores for all recent purchases of that item, and then run down all of those purchases one by one.

This is fairly unlikely, but it’s possible.

5

Not the UPC code, but a store’s bar code inventory system could do it. It would probably start with the cop’s seeing “Al’s Sporting Goods” on the sticker. Then they go from there. I’m with LSLGuy on this one both about the possibility that the store uses a sophisticated bar code inventory system that could reveal the information and about the likelihood that they actually do use such a system.

My friend produces true-crime TV shows. Strict historical accuracy is often sacrificed for the sake of telling a better story. It’s also possible that the police just lied to the guy about how much information they had.

The police could easily find the store’s name on a price sticker on the arrow. They take the arrow to the store and the store says that they sold only four of those arrows in the last umpteen months, all to one guy in one transaction. And he paid by credit card. So the police knock on his door and get him to make the incriminating statements about the number of arrows.

6

Good stuff. I figured the show was just playing fast and loose with accuracy. I guess it could even be that to a lay man and barcode is a UPC code and what the officer described on camera as a UPC code was not that at all.

7

I don’t think it had to have that much information on it.

Say the UPC sticker says “Big 5” above the barcode. Where do you suppose it came from? Did it come from the Big 5 in the nearest town or one across the country? No way to tell, but assume it came from the nearest one. Do they sell a lot of that particular arrow? Have they sold any recently? Ask them. Maybe you’re lucky and they’ve had one transaction in the last month and not 20 transactions that week. Maybe that customer has a loyalty card with their real address on it. You really don’t have anything, you can’t get a warrant or charge them with a crime but you can knock on their door. Ask a few seemingly innocent questions, get them to contradict themselves, get them flustered, they admit enough to move forward.

8

Arrows aren’t sold as single pieces; they generally come in packages of 6 or 12 (sometimes 3-packs for very expensive ones).

And any good bow hunter would remove the labels from the arrow before using it.

9

If they did sell them as each (some stores do for fancy ones) then they’d probably have to print custom labels for each one. Even without the store name, a knowledgeable sports store salesman could tell you which store in the area “has barcodes like that…”

10

The best lesson to learn here is, if you do something illegal, shut up!

There’s no direct evidence linking the arrows to the guy. He could even say, "man I lost that arrow weeks ago in the woods. Who knows who found it. " And that would be that.

The second best lesson out of this is, don’t do illegal shit!

11

Is it possible that the story is accurate with no additional embellishment from the reporter?

Suppose the arrows had aluminum shafts and the UPC was “printed” as part of the anodizing process? That is, you would not be able to remove it without abrasives, which might affect the corrosion resistance of the shaft.

With that UPC, you have the manufacturer and item number. A quick call around to local stores would reveal any in that area that carried these arrows. If they were lucky, only one store in the area carried that item. Even if it was a half-dozen, that is only six stores the cops have to investigate. (I doubt there are 6 stores in a 50 mile radius from here that even sell hunting arrows).

If the arrow appeared to be brand-new, you can check the records of the last few weeks of sales of that item. As mentioned, if it was paid with CC, they have the name of the purchaser.

So, above, as in the OP, they used the UPC to find the store, date and time of the purchase, and the purchaser. Could the same have been done if the arrow did not have a UPC? Probably. Say the arrows were sold in a package with the UPC on the package and no barcode on the arrows. Finding a local store that sold that arrow would not have been that difficult and, once they had the manufacturer and item number (the UPC) of the package, they could search the store’s sales records.

Yes, they way it was presented in the OP made it sound as if all they had to do was scan the arrow into their “Law Enforcement Database” to find the purchaser’s name, address, what times he would be at home, and what color shoes he wears. But, technology hasn’t gotten to that point (yet). It seems they did leave out a lot of the old-fashioned police work, with a side-helping of luck, that was needed. But, that is the way of journalism; make boring stories a bit more interesting.

12

I suspect anyone who uses arrows for hunting (poaching) is probably an archery enthusiast and using higher end, fancier arrows. As noted above, that would probably limit the number of places that sold them and the number of transactions to investigate.

The only other points - if the story mentions barcodes, it’s unlikely they needed to identify the arrow type and find a barcode. There’s always the possibility, too, that an archery enthusiast has had those arrows lying around for months or years (unless it’s a new model). But like any police legwork, it’s worth a try.