Against "Displacement": A Thought about Hilgert's "Culture Matters"

In "Why Culture Matters," Markus Hilgert asserts that the importance of culture lies in its "fostering  identity through cultural heritage" (as the article's title after the colon puts it), and defines the key problems facing culture as those of the destruction and displacement of heritage. 

Culture, heritage, identity -- these terms are almost intolerably contaminated by received ideas and begged questions, so much so that any effort to say something intelligible about their relationship in a column is bound to fall short. But what I find more troubling in Hilgert's argument is his discussion of displacement. 

The term "displacement" is problematic, because as Hilgert uses it it obscures the distinction between the looting of archaeological sites and the illicit export of artifacts. Archaeological site looting destroys the archaeological context needed to study the past objectively and provide the facts grounding the historical truth about the past; illicit export of artifacts injures national pride (in ways that may, by the way, paradoxically strengthen a sense of aggrieved national identity, with consequences that the last century's history shows can be murderous).

While heritage and identity need to be cared for, we cannot care for them properly without a primary commitment to truth, rather than to heritage or identity per se. And that means that policies should pay at least as much attention to the need to secure archaeological sites from looting as they pay to iconoclasm, conservation and repatriation of displaced artifacts, and heritage development.

100 antiquities police officers needed, 7 on the books

Laws against looting and smuggling are meaningless if the state doesn't enforce them. This simple truth is nearly always ignored by heritage protection advocates, or applied by them only to the demand end with calls for more seizures and prosecutions (calls that went unheeded until the trafficking of antiquities became linked to terrorism, which has had some salutary effect in directing more governmental attention and resources to bear). Seizures and prosecutions require funding and staffing of positions for officers and prosecutors.

Which makes this story about the Idol Wing of India's Tamil Nandu police particularly appalling:

The Idol Wing is severely understaffed and under-equipped. When it was newly formed, it was supposed to have 100 police officers. Now it has only seven officers listed on its website. Recently, the Madras High Court observed that of the 29 personnel sanctioned for the Idol Wing, 9 positions were vacant. “It is almost like a punishment post,” said Vijay Kumar. “It should be centralised and incentivised. Each of these cases take years to crack.” 

Recent events have hurt the Wing’s reputation and credibility. Two police officials who worked at the wing eight years ago have been accused of selling a set of panchaloha idols which they seized, to Deenadayalan for Rs 15 lakh. The incident was reported in January, but soon after, Inspector Kader Baccha, one of the accused, was promoted as the Deputy Superintendent of Police in another district. Subburaj, then the Head Constable of the Idol Wing, was promoted as Sub-Inspector at a city police station.
Last month, upon enquiry by the Madras High Court, both were arrested.

A due diligence checklist -- the starting point for a calibrated taxing system for antiquities or for a registration system

Matthew Bogdanos and Amr al-Azm provide a helpful list of due diligence red flag indicators for insurers, dealers, auction houses and collectors handling antiquities. 

This is an excellent starting point for a checklist that could be used for a registration system for antiquities and/or as the basis for assessing the tax rate for a given artifact (the more red flags, the higher the tax) under a Pigovian (corrective) tax system. I have laid out the Pigovian tax idea here.

A possible second-best solution for orphaned antiquities?

This article in the New York Times describes how one art collector donated a work to the Prado, noting that 

he will be eligible for a tax deduction because the donation was made not to a foreign museum but to the American Friends of the Prado Museum, a United States-based charity.

The article also flags the difficulty of finding a museum willing to take "orphaned" antiquities:

Antiquities are particularly fraught, given patrimony laws that protect artifacts.

“You may have some great Egyptian artifacts and you’d love to have them in the museum when you die, because who else is going to take them?” Mr. Schindler said. “But if you don’t have good proof that they came out of the ground before 1970, good luck.”

This raises an interesting question about such artifacts. If collectors want them to go into a museum, should they be encouraged and permitted by countries of origin to donate their antiquities to a US nonprofit representing that country's national museum?

The downside, of course, is that donors will get a tax break for giving artifacts that might possibly have been looted. The upside is that the artifacts at least go back to the country of origin rather than back into the marketplace, and at far less cost in time and effort than would be necessary for restitution cases to be brought. In effect the American taxpayer would be underwriting the cost of returning artifacts to their original country -- though, it must be noted, never to their original find spot.

U.S. Senators are pushing for Native American Artifact legislation -- but will it do any good?

Here's a news story on the proposed legislation. Two pieces, count-'em two! Well, one is just a resolution. The other, STOP, stands for the Safeguard Tribal Objects of Patrimony Act. So far as I can tell, the main things the legislation does are two: to double the jailtime it is possible to get on conviction for a second offense, and require the Comptroller General to submit a report estimating number of artifacts trafficked and number of prosecutions, "after collecting information from the Attorney General, the Secretary of the Interior, and the Secretary of State, and meeting, as appropriate, with Indian tribes and Native Hawaiian organizations". 

Unfortunately, none of those entities, so far as I know, has the capacity or interest or wherewithal to provide estimates of the extent of the illicit market. As to the doubling of penalties, the theory of deterrence requires that the risk of actually being prosecuted be factored into the deterrent effect. Saddam introduced the death penalty for looting when he lost control, with no discernible impact. So long as the risk of prosecution remains low -- which it will absent some increased incentives to prosecute, increased provision of financial resources to prosecutors, requirements to expand prosecutions, or changes in the burden of proof to make prosecutions cheaper and easier -- there's not likely to be much impact. Nice acronym, though.

Libya: Cultural Racketeering by the Actual Mafia and What it Tells Us about How It Should Be Fought

Informative piece on Libya's struggle to protect its archaeological sites in the absence of a strong centralized government. Several points to note:

• international trafficking of antiquities is, as Deborah Lehr and the Antiquities Coalition have emphasized, racketeering in which the smugglers are mafia-like organizations -- or in this instance, the actual Mafia!
• high-end artifacts are being proffered, not just cheap pots.  It may well be the case that there are distinct smuggling channels, with the more violent ones operating at the higher end where the profit margin is the highest. This is at least a hypothesis to be tested.
• Given the cost of weapons, and the apparently direct trade of weapons to terrorists in exchange for antiquities to the mafia, it makes sense for higher-end artifacts to be favored currency.
• securing sites in the absence of central authority requires not SPI-style economic development projects aimed at gaining local buy-in, valuable as such projects are in peacetime situations in countries at peace, but rather the arming of local groups backed by rebel authorities.

Parcak's Peru Project: What about the looters?

First things first. Sarah Parcak's project is awesome. So is Larry Coben's Sustainable Preservation Initiative. And the possibilities for Peru laid out in this TED talk are fantastic.

That said, I am still anxious about how the discovery of myriad previously unidentified unexcavated sites is going to be handled in a way that doesn't lead to massive looting. Statements like this one, meant to be reassuring, instead give me pause:

So many sites in Peru are threatened, but the great part is that all of this data is going to be shared with archaeologists on the front lines of protecting these sites. 

Okay, but how are archaeologists on the front lines going to deal with looters absent much more robust sustained funding to pay for all the site guards that are going to be needed to guard these sites as they are being excavated? I can see how once they are excavated SPI might take over, to some extent, winning hearts and minds of locals by giving them an economic incentive to protect sites, or at least those sites that generate tourist revenue. But that's going to happen later if at all. The major danger lies in the period after the discovery is made, before and during excavations, especially on massive sites where archaeologists will perforce be digging only on a tiny fraction.  

The "front lines" is not just a metaphor. Guys with guns are going to come, following the archaeologists (or perhaps hacking the crowd-sourced data, though I have been assured this is not going to be doable). Archaeologists doing the digging on the front lines are going to need help from people who know how to guard sites. How is the Peruvian government going to find the money to pay for guards and police to stop them? Does the TED prize provide funding for that? National Geographic? The archaeologists being given the data? Is the money going to be raised from the thousands of volunteers helping GlobalExplorer?

Financing of site security and archaeological policing is the missing piece of the puzzle. Without it, I worry that this project may end up inadvertently causing the destruction of much of what it discovers.

If Florence can lease its piazzas, why can't museums lease antiquities to raise $ to protect sites?

Florence is leasing the Palazzo Vecchio, the Ponte Vecchio, the Piazza d'Ognisannti, the Belvedere... the list goes on and on. A lot of desperately needed money is being raised, although the inconvenience to residents (and presumably, also to visitors barred from these public spaces for the duration of the lease) is real and not inconsequential, unless the lease is during hours when the building or bridge would not be in use or normally closed.

The temporary privatizing of cultural space is not a new phenomenon. As I learned while researching the Brooklyn Museum controversy over the Chris Ofili Madonna (see my intro to the edited volume Unsettling 'Sensation' here), museums have been renting out their great halls for corporate and individual soirées -- not just gala fundraisers for the museum, but private functions -- for decades now.

Which raises the question: If Florence can lease its piazzas and museums their exhibition spaces to raise money needed to preserve their heritage, why can't museums lease antiquities from their storerooms to raise money needed to preserve archaeological sites? 

"Safe haven" self-justifies collector/curator/dealer in smuggling Pakistani artifacts

Antiquities dealer, who also is a collector and a curator of his own online "museum", cops a plea. Note the "safe haven" self-justification.

McNamara said he kept, rather than sold, most of the materials he imported from Pakistan, as his interest was mainly in the scientific value of the relics rather than the monetary value. He said he did not think initially that what he was doing was illegal and, in some ways, thought he was rescuing precious materials. 

But McNamara acknowledged that he realized that willful ignorance of the law was no excuse for his crime, and he did sell some of what he imported. He admitted that he and the others conspired to create fake documents indicating that their shipments had Pakistani government approval, and that he lied to U.S. Homeland Security investigators looking into the matter.

Imagine if Hobby Lobby had had to pay a Pigovian tax on the antiquities it purchased

The Green family has spent a reported $30 million amassing its collection, and have been under federal investigation for five years under suspicion of importing looted artifacts. One reason the investigation has gone so slowly, one must presume, is that the government doesn't have the resources to go faster.

Now imagine that the US put in place a tax on purchases of antiquities, say 10%, on the principle established long ago by economist Arthur Pigoux that the social costs that are the byproduct of some economic activities (i.e., air pollution) should be paid back by the industries involved in creating the harm. Spending $30 million in the antiquities market, whether the purchases are legitimate or not, causes social harm because the licit market is not clearly distinguishable from the illicit market and because high prices signal to looters that antiquities are desirable commodities.

10% of $30 million is $3 million, $3 million that might have helped pay for a much speedier investigation or for many other enforcement and deterrent efforts that are so sorely lacking. Without some such financing mechanism, it is chimerical to think that additional import restrictions or merely verbal commitments by governments to do more will make much of a difference. (HR 1493, I should note, is scored by the CBO as revenue neutral.)

Antiquities Under Siege recommendation made 8 years ago now being taken up

This is one of the few ideas now in play that really could do some good in terms of protecting archaeological sites:

the task force proposed by Italy, which “is gaining traction at UNESCO”, should include archeologists, military forces specialized in the safeguard of cultural heritage, ONGs personnel and cataloguers. “They should be deployed in “grey” areas where there are tensions, but not wars”. It is something similar to the “culture peacekeepers”, as it was discussed recently, but “definitely, we are not talking about sending paratroopers to Palmyra”, clarified the minister. 

Italy thinks that peacekeeping missions should also include a cultural dimension, and Gentiloni made the longstanding experience acquired by Carabinieri available to the project.

In the appendix to Antiquities under Siege: Cultural Heritage Protection after the Iraq War (Altamira, 2008), we put forth this recommendation, among others. The key difference from other "Monuments Men"-style task forces being advocated for by Blue Shield and other preservation/conservation-focused groups is that here there will also be some people who can protect the sites from gun-toting looters, a crucial need if the work of preserving and conserving is to be feasible.

Mushrooms and antiquities

Jedediah Purdy's review of Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing’s The Mushroom at the End of the World doesn't directly refer to the analogy between mushrooms and antiquities, but makes plenty of oblique references, i.e.:

An ethics of precarity is too close to taking art photographs of decay in a city we cannot save. Adam Smith, who was also interested in the naturalness of capitalism, once wrote that there is a lot of ruin in a country. The same goes for the world. It is too soon, and, more important, it surrenders too much, to make ruin our master-metaphor. The world still has a good deal of ruin in it, and, we can hope, plenty of fight as well. 

Kurdish Museum buys looted artifacts

One of the lingering questions about the massive looting that occurred in Iraq in the years following the 2003 US invasion is where all the artifacts have gone and why it continued even after a worldwide ban on international trade in Iraqi materials was put in place, abating somewhat over time. Very little appeared on the open market and it is thought that much was simply stockpiled in warehouses, or bought privately by wealthy collectors around the world. 

But the looters and smugglers inside Iraq were being sustained as well by the council of ministers of Iraqi Kurdistan, directors of the Sulaymaniyah Museum, which

started an initiative to make deals with smugglers after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and the subsequent looting of museums in the country, according to Ancient History Etc., a U.K. nonprofit online publication.

The museum bought a tablet -- one of a group of 80-90 being proffered -- containing 20 previously lost lines of "The Epic of Gilgamesh, for $800 off a smuggler in Iraq in 2011.

 

"They paid smugglers to ‘intercept’ archeological artifacts on their journey to other countries," according to the publication. "No questions were asked about who was selling the piece or where it came from." 

Stuart Gibson, director of the UNESCO Sulaymaniyah Museum Project -- an effort to assist the Kurdish government in running the museum -- praised the museum's decision as "courageous" because it ran counter to official policy against paying smugglers and looters for looted artifacts. That policy exists, of course, because paying these folks gives them an incentive to keep on looting and smuggling. Asking no questions makes this incentive even more attractive. 

The Huffington Post headline suggests that the question raised by the museum's practice of buying looted antiquities is : Should museums make deals with smugglers and looters in order to protect and preserve history? But that way of putting the question, while it is undoubtedly the way that museums interested in bringing material in think of what they are doing, begs the question. The deal described was not made in order to protect and preserve history. It was made in order to keep the artifact from leaving the country. Had the tablet gotten out of Kurdistan it would surely have been sold to someone anyway, someone who would have in turn protected and preserved it. The only effect here was to shorten the supply chain, reduce the cost of doing business for smugglers and looters, and thereby promoted more digging and more smuggling.

Boston MFA pulls bust out of storage to honor slain Palmyra director

Though it would be too painful to contemplate putting this particular piece in circulation at this time, here's an example of the level of quality of objects in museum storerooms that might be used in an antiquities-leasing program to steer collectors towards "renting" and away from buying looted artifacts on the illicit market:

This is not the only Palmyran sculpture on display in this part of the world. Other first-rate examples can be seen both at the MFA and in museums such as the recently renovated Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford. But with its fine carving articulating the woman’s “wet drapery” garment and exquisitely pleated headwear, her perfectly parted wavy hair, and her Hellenistic features, it’s both beautiful and characteristic, and it hasn’t been on display in a generation.

Why I am worried about AAMD's new "safe haven" protocols

Brian Daniels, whom I greatly respect for the important work he and his colleagues are doing to try to monitor and help Syrians safeguard archaeological sites and artifacts, is happy about the AAMD's announcement of safe haven protocols for antiquities from conflict zones. Here's Brian's facebook post, which many other fellow heritage protection advocates are retweeting approvingly:

"Quite possibly one of the most important developments in the field of cultural heritage policy in recent years. Not only does the AAMD declare its support for the 1954 Hague Convention, but it will treat objects in AAMD member museum safe havens as loans--not permanent acquisitions. (As such, a U.S. museum would need to follow U.S. law for an international museum loan to participate). The guidance outlined here is what framers of the 1954 Hague Convention had in mind for museums following World War II."

I cannot share this enthusiasm. Framers of the 1954 Hague Convention did not have in mind, objects dug up from archaeological sites by private parties, smuggled out of Syria to Turkey or Dubai and then bought up by dealers or collectors. There was nothing like the global market for illicitly excavated antiquities in 1954 that there is now. And the AAMD protocols, I worry, include provisions that will encourage more looting and smuggling of artifacts.

Here's the relevant section of the AAMD protocols, with the problematic language italicized:

II. The Source of Works In Need of Safe HavensIn the event of a terrorism occurrence or during an armed conflict or natural disaster, works may be brought for safe haven in the United States, Canada or Mexico from any depositor, assuming of course compliance with applicable law (see below).  Predetermining who may request such assistance in the abstract is not always possible, but may include the legal owner of a work, the agent for the owner, the bailee of a work, the custodian of a work, and a person or entity who comes into possession of the work and the owner is unknown, unavailable or legally constrained [sic] (collectively, a “depositor”).  Examples of a depositor are:

• Museums in the affected area that hold works;

• Governmental entities of or within the affected areas;

• U.S. government authorities who have seized works on entry to or in the United States; or

• Private individuals, companies or organizations who own or come into possession of works, whether in the affected area or after removal from the area.

Member museums should exercise caution to assure that accepting the request for safe haven will not violate the rights of lawful owners, subject the museum to a claim for return, reflect negatively on the reputation of the museum or cause the museum to be involved in any illegal or unethical activity.  Requests for safe haven and agreements to accept such requests should be documented where possible prior to movement of works to be transferred.

The garbled syntax in the first italicized phrase is a tell, indicating that this is an issue the AAMD must have been wrangling. With good reason. The last quoted paragraph above notwithstanding, the protocols give a green light to museums to accept as loans artifacts purchased from the networks that are paying looters to continue to dig, networks that in some cases are run by or beholden to ISIS. Those who purchase such blood antiquities will now be able to loan them to a museum, which will provide the buyers with a patina of legitimacy and museum approval that will increase the value of the artifact when it is returned to them. 

Taking as loans artifacts from museums, government entities, or seizures is an excellent idea. Taking as loans artifacts bought from the illicit market is a terrible idea.

, seeing it as marking a welcome albeit belated move that 

No specialist prosecutors for antiquities/terrorism cases: a major stumbling block

Those who have been applauding ICE's ceremonies returning seized artifacts should instead be booing. They don't understand that every such public relations event that doesn't also include announcements of arrests and indictments is a lost opportunity and a symptom that the Obama administration has failed to devote the resources needed to really tackle the black market in antiquities.

This is made clear in a very informative blogpost from cultural heritage lawyer Rick St.-Hilaire laying out in very damning detail the failure of the Obama administration's Justice Department to follow through on an antiquities smuggling case in 2011 that involved suspected money laundering tied to terrorism.  Instead, the artifacts were returned in a DC photo-op ceremony.

As St.-Hilaire notes,

A specially assigned heritage trafficking prosecutor based at the Department of Justice in Washington probably could have facilitated this search warrant request by coordinating with the appropriate right U.S. Attorney's office. But no such specialist prosecutor exists.

Maybe I just missed it -- and if so, will one of the readers of this blog please ease my mind -- but I don't recall hearing from ICE or the Department of Justice during last week's various policy events. The announcement of a reward for information leading to the disruption of terrorist-related antiquities-smuggling networks might indicate some movement in the direction of a heritage trafficking prosecution. But a dedicated prosecutor is long overdue. The Department of Homeland Security's budget is only $55 billion though, so perhaps they cannot afford one.

Christie's due diligence: this does not compute

What Christie's says about its due diligence checking provenances of antiquities:

“We are always on the alert for material of this type in case an attempt is made to introduce looted items into the commercial art market, and we work closely with UNESCO, Interpol and other entities to ensure any such attempts will be caught,” said Sung-Hee Kim, communications liaison at Christie’s, who said to date, the auction and art house has not encountered any such items.... 

According to Kim, Christie’s has a policy of not accepting items for sale without a legitimate signed title confirmation. In addition, they require provenance pre-dating the year 2000 as well as pre-dating any periods of significant conflict.

What Christie's does: 

In the three first cases, Christie’s ‘due diligence’ seems to have stopped short of tracing the collecting history back one step further, which would have opened the window on the Becchina transactions.  In the fourth case (lot 93), Christie’s record lists the 1986 and 1997 transaction dates in the lekythos’ collecting history, but completely avoids mentioning the authorities’ raid of Horiuchi’s warehouse in Switzerland or the subsequent passage or ownership of the vase by the convicted Aboutaam brothers, through their ‘Phoenix Ancient Art’ gallery in New York and Geneva.

Even with strong evidence of bad provenance, antiquities get auctioned, so good luck keeping Syrian stuff off market

Excellent blogpost from ARCA's Lynda Albertson, posing the question:

If the art market cannot hold itself to task on objects where there is a known and extensive photographic record of illicit activity how will the art market perform its due diligence on antiquities coming from conflict countries like Syria, Iraq and Yemen where no confiscated smuggler dossiers exist?

The Asia Society/Antiquities Coalition Meeting: A Few Afterthoughts

Video of the fascinating Asia Society/Antiquities Coalition meeting here. I came away from it hopeful that we are beginning to get somewhere, in several senses. First, Kevin Rudd's involvement as the director of the Asia Society's new policy shop gives us a former Prime Minister of Australia with the political leadership chops to help persuade both governments and powerful private parties to focus on the problem in a strategic way. Second, the stated willingness of a media campaign specialist to raise awareness in the corporate sector holds out the hope that, together with Rudd and of course the Antiquities Coalition, something like the Clinton Global Initiative's ivory project but for antiquities might actually be possible. Third, the meeting showed that there are a number of policy ideas cooking, some of them (like the antiquities-leasing scheme I push, or Cuno's retro notion of a return to partake, or the boots-on-the-ground called for by several speakers) more dramatic and unrealizable in the short term than others, but the key thing is to have this kind of discussion happening.

Viewers can draw their own conclusions about the exchanges between Jim Cuno and Matthew Bogdanov, Katharyn Hanson, and me over Cuno's worry that the problem is overblown and his suggestion near the end of the program -- in response to my earlier modest proposal that the Getty and other museums could dramatically shrink the market for looted antiquities by renting out some of the artifacts sitting in their store-rooms -- that doing so would be a step backward.

Want to Ruin the Market for Looted Syrian Antiquities? Here's One Way

This new CBS report joins other undercover reporting that includes cellphone photos sent by traffickers to the reporter showing artifacts for sale.  Which suggests an interesting idea I haven't heard mentioned yet for how to fight the illicit trade in such artifacts: gather such images, just as the CBS team did, and then post them on the internet, identifying them as illicit and effectively rendering the artifacts unsaleable -- at least unsaleable to what Matthew Bogdanos in the report names as "the four destination points of New York, London, Paris and Tokyo" (Bogdanos for reasons I don't understand leaves out the Gulf States, certainly a more likely destination for ISIS-looted artifacts than Tokyo).

There are some downsides to consider. Undercover work costs money -- though for this nowhere near the amount it costs to mount international investigations of smuggling networks (to say nothing of what we are spending to remotely monitor the ongoing looting of sites), since only one node is being accessed.  This would not be risk-free work -- no undercover work is ever risk free. Buyers would have to rotate and be replaced to avoid detection and harm. And if it were to be undertaken, those posing as foreign buyers would almost certainly need to work with the Turkish or Lebanese  police, which might prove difficult. But unlike seizures of artifacts coming into the US or UK or France, which constitute a loss of profit for the dealers that they can and do simply pass on to buyers as a cost of doing business, the immediate losers in the case of looted artifacts posted to the internet would be the smugglers, who have no way to pass on the cost. The passing on of images via cellphone photos would become a thing of the past pretty quickly. (Many smugglers have already turned to video-streaming or snapchat-like image sharing to try to leave no record on the phones or computers of complicit buyers, but undercover buyers could easily capture those images.) [UPDATE 10/17: the CBS news producer speaking at the Met says the fellow who sent her the cellphone photos is still sending her photos, so he obviously wasn't much deterred -- though it would be interesting to see what happened if CBS were to now post those photos!]


This would be a great program for UNESCO in coordination with INTERPOL, the FBI, the Blue Shield, and the carabinieri to undertake. [For reasons I hope are evident, it would not be something to be done by academics as part of a research project.] It might be sponsored by the Getty and dealers who ought to prefer this kind of exposure to the gotcha they've experienced from the use of the Medici archive to embarrass them. Maybe, instead of yet another meeting bewailing the loss of heritage, it would make sense to spend that money on some undercover work.

ADDENDUM: An interesting new article by Sam Hardy studying direct-to-buyer reports notes that

 After the publication of photographs of the royal graves at Copan in Honduras (Stuart, 1997), the site was looted (Agurcia Fasquelle, 1998) in a way that indicated collectors had effectively used National Geographic as a sales catalogue. Likewise, a hieroglyphic text and carving of a bound captive were extracted from one 1,300-year-old stela, and a single sceptre was extracted from another such stela, at Dos Pilas (Luke, 2005). Without perpetrators’ use of publicly accessible documents to identify the targets, the fact that these thefts were commissioned would have remained unknown.

So at least in some cases, the existence of publicly accessible images did not deter buyers. But these were objects in situ not yet looted, and so not brought to the attention of law enforcement as pieces for which to be on the lookout.