Parents and students in Northland school districts have a new, more efficient way to relay tips to Crime Stoppers.
Crime Stoppers has promoted its 474-TIPS hotline number for 32 years. More recently, the organization started taking tips by texts. The Northland Safe School Task Force got so many texts that officials reached out to Kansas City Crime Stoppers to help manage the information from students and parents.
Det. Kevin Boehm, a coordinator for the Greater Kansas City Crime Stoppers, says tips from the Northland often didn't get processed until school resource officers got to work in the morning.
“Crime Stoppers is a 24-7 operation so hopefully we’ll be able to expand the reach and actually manage these tips in real time," Boehm says. "There are tips that come in that are urgent, and they need to be acted upon a little bit sooner.”
Boehm says as soon as a tip comes in, it will be sent to the appropriate school resource officer or to the police department that would handle the crime.
Crime Stoppers says it has helped clear 24,000 cases since it started taking anonymous tips in 1982 and has paid out almost $1.3 million in cash rewards.
