Police Encourage Tippers to Use Text Messaging to Combat Crime

7/3/2008
By Mitch Stacy
Associated Press

TAMPA, Fla. -- Police in the 1970s urged citizens to "drop a dime" in a payphone to report crimes anonymously. Now in an increasing number of cities,tipsters are being invited to use their thumbs -- to identify criminalsusing text messages.
Police hope the idea helps recruit teens and 20-somethings who wouldn'tnormally dial a Crime Stoppers hot line to share information withauthorities.
"If somebody hears Johnny is going to bring a gun to school, hopefullythey'll text that in," said Sgt. Brian Bernardi of the Louisville MetroPolice Department, which rolled out its text-message tip line in June.
Departments in Boston and Cincinnati started accepting anonymous text tipsabout a year ago. Since then, more than 100 communities have taken similarsteps or plan to do so. The Internet-based systems route messages through aserver that encrypts cell phone numbers before they get to police, makingtips virtually impossible to track.
In Louisville earlier this week, Bernardi's computer displayed a textmessage from a person identified only as "Tip563." It read: "someone hasvandalized the school van at valor school on bardstown rd in fern creek."The note also reported illegal dumping in a trash container and in thewoods.
"It's obvious that the future of communication is texting," said officerMichael Charbonnier, commander of the Boston Police Department's CrimeStoppers unit. "You look at these kids today and that's all they're doing.You see five kids standing on the corner, and they're texting instead ofhaving a conversation with each other."
When Boston adopted the system last year, the first text tip yielded anarrest in a New Hampshire slaying. In the 12 months that ended June 15,Boston police logged 678 text tips, nearly matching the 727 phone tipsduring the same period.
Earlier this year, a text tip led to the arrest of a notorious suspect in adrug case.
"We've gotten some great drug information, specific times, dates, names ofsuspects, locations, pickup times, license plate numbers," Charbonnier said.In another instance, a hearing-impaired man who could not call 911 used atext message to report a domestic violence incident.
Since the beginning of the year, cities such as Tampa, San Francisco,Seattle, Denver, Indianapolis, New Orleans and Detroit have started theirown text-based tip systems, according to Texas-based Anderson Software, aleading providers of the technology. Many cities are adding the textmessages to a system that already accepted anonymous tips through a Website.
Lisa Haber, a sheriff's detective who heads the Tampa-area Crime Stoppersunit, recently spent an hour exchanging 21 text messages with a tipsterabout a possible stolen car. It didn't yield an arrest, but Haber said itallowed her to glimpse the potential of being able to communicate in realtime with texters.
Sarah Coss, an 18-year-old incoming freshman at the University of Tampa,typically logs around 6,000 text messages a month chatting to her friends.She thinks people who use text messaging every day will be more likely toreport crimes that way, and the impersonal nature of text messaging willgive more people her age the confidence to share information withauthorities.
"It might take a while for people to know about it and get more comfortablewith it, and for people to know it's really anonymous, and they're not goingto get in trouble," she said.
Just like callers to a crime hot line, text tipsters can collect rewards forsignificant information. It's done with the cooperation of banks that handover the cash -- no questions asked -- to people who present a code issuedby police.
Officers acknowledge it may take time to get used to the text shorthandfavored by younger people, who tend to LOL at the relative technologicalcluelessness of their parents' generation.
"We were kind of nervous about that, having to learn a new code language,"Bernardi chuckled.