All About Crimestoppers
ALL ABOUT CRIMESTOPPERS
What’s On regularly provides a short update on crime in the village. Fortunately Wenvoe crime data, which can be found on the police statistics website, reveals that we have a relatively low crime rate. Occasionally however we may find it necessary to report local crime. Contact details for the local police, including the Wenvoe PCSO, Dave Chadock can be found on page 2, along with information about Crimestoppers. Although most people have heard of Crimestoppers, many know little about it.
Crimestoppers provides an opportunity for people to report crimes anonymously and
these reports are then passed on to the police. It is important to note that Crimestoppers is not the police but an independent charity working to help communities. You can contact Crimestoppers to report crimes with a free telephone call (0800 555 111) or by completing an online form. If the information you give leads to an arrest, or is of significant use, you may be eligible to claim a cash reward of up to £1,000. The Crimestoppers national website provides more information.
The key to the success of Crimestoppers is that you can report crimes with confidence that your report will remain anonymous. Indeed it’s rare for Crimestoppers to trumpet its successes because it can’t risk compromising the guarantee of anonymity that it provides to everyone who gets in contact. No records are kept of the personal details, phone numbers or computer IP addresses of anyone who makes contact.
As Crimestoppers is not the police there are some things that the organisation cannot process. These include fly-tipping, scam e-mails or phone calls, noise complaints, benefit fraud, dumped or untaxed vehicles, minor driving offences or missing people. The website provides advice on what to do in these circumstances.
Crimestoppers has been a huge success. Since it began in 1988, it has received more than 2.2 million actionable calls, resulting in more than 150,000 arrests and charges, more than £140 million worth of stolen goods recovered and more than £367 million worth of illegal drugs seized. Between April 2022 and March 2023, Crimestoppers sent police forces over 196,000 anonymous crime reports – that’s 537 per day and 22 per hour. Some 60% of the reports sent to police forces are drugs-related. Typically, they’re sightings of dealers in cars or on street corners, details of cannabis factories, or intelligence about so-called county lines networks – the city-based gangs that supply drugs to rural areas and seaside towns. Crimestoppers also has a Most Wanted UK-wide gallery with images, which since 2005 has resulted in more than 5,000 arrests.
Crimestoppers actually began in Alburquerque, New Mexico in 1976. Its UK origins appear to have been linked to the October 1985 London riots. When PC Keith Blakelock was murdered at the Broadwater Farm Estate, the police appealed for information, stating that people knew who had been responsible but were frightened of coming forward. This according to the UK website, led in January 1988, to the founding of the Community Action Trust (CAT), by Michael (later Lord) Ashcroft and business partners. The CAT was a phone line where people called and anonymously provided information about crime, which was then forwarded to the police. By 1995 it was re-named Crimestoppers Trust and expanded to the whole of the UK.
There is also however a counter claim that Crimestoppers originated in the town of Great Yarmouth in 1983. Mike Cole, then a Detective Inspector with the Norfolk Constabulary, got the idea from a police visit to the US. Inspired by what was happening in the US, Crimestoppers was set up in the town, with the agreement of the police, financial support from the town’s Woolworth store and publicity from the local Yarmouth Mercury newspaper. Crimestoppers encouraged people to pass information to police anonymously without fear of reprisal. Informants called a dedicated telephone number at Great Yarmouth Police Station. A reward was handed out in brown envelopes for information received, often in dark alleys.