A new website which is designed to offer direct payments to people who provide successful tips to Halifax County Crimestoppers is now live.
“I think it’s going to revolutionize the way that tips come in,” said Tracy Story, chair of the Crimestoppers board. “To my knowledge we are the only crimestoppers agency that is offering online payments to its tipsters and that’s nationwide.”
The website, crimestopperspays.com, he said, accepts Cash App, PayPal, Venmo, Meta Pay — formerly Facebook Pay — as well as the traditional method of going to the bank and picking up a payment for a tip which leads to an arrest or provides a significant advancement in a case. “Everyone of the other (crimestoppers) agencies are just doing bank pickups, which obviously, in my opinion, is nowhere near as anonymous as it would be to give Cash App information or PayPal information to an agent of Crimestoppers.”
Remains anonymous
The new website adheres to the anonymity principles of the original Crimestoppers program, said Story. “We purge the system monthly now so no information is kept. No information is ever revealed — not even a PayPal or Cash App address is ever revealed to the public and it is never revealed to law enforcement.”
The aim, he said, is to “hopefully inspire people to say, ‘I’m going to submit tips. Now I can get paid directly to my home, meaning phone’ while you’re there or your job or wherever you are — instant payments when approved by our board. So now this honestly can be a source of income for people who want to make life better for our community but also want to get paid for doing so.”
Payout criteria
The payout criteria has to be either information that leads to an arrest or one which significantly advances the efforts of law enforcement.
What the significantly advances criteria means is, for instance, trips which help lead to information on missing people or unsolved murders in the county. “If a tip leads to a significant advancement to any of those cases, we will pay out accordingly.”
A significant advancement could be identifying a person of interest, new evidence presented or found, a tip leading to a witness who would be willing to speak.
It also includes photographs since the site allows uploads or documentation.
Looking for better ways to pay
Story and former board Chair Jay Burch had discussed looking at better ways to pay tipsters. “In a small town or community, walking into a local bank and asking for your Crimestoppers tip money is not anonymous. They don’t know the case that you’re getting your money for, but they know you gave a tip. To me, that’s dangerous for people that may be in line behind you. We all know that people do talk and to me that’s dangerous. I would much rather offer an online service where you can put in your PayPal, Cash App, Venmo and receive the payment sent to you.”
The dropdown menu of the website continues to offer the bank option.
Story said he and the board observed, however, that money which went to the bank was not being picked up. “If we sent 10 payments to the bank, we would get 9.5 of them back, meaning they never got picked up. So it’s a constant open and closed door cycle of taking it to the bank and nobody comes and gets it.”
Currently, Crimestoppers is getting between 35 to 45 tips a month, which has been a significant increase over the past 24 months.
Story wants even more tips to come in. “My goal is to inspire people to communicate with us, to give us their tips to advise law enforcement so that they can arrest the ones that are doing harm, doing the bad things in this community, get the drugs off the streets.”
Crimestoppers is set up so tipsters don’t get summoned to court. “You’re not going to get asked to testify. You’re not going to have an investigator knock on your door and say, ‘Hey, we need to talk about your tip.’ They can’t do that because they don’t know who you are. This is the safest and most effective way to get information to law enforcement, to clean up our streets and at the same time get paid to do it.”
Payouts
There is a variance in the payouts. The average is around $100. “Through Crimestoppers we can pay up to $2,500, depending on the amount of information and what it is about. If one of our unsolved cases as far as missing people or murders were to be solved by a specific tip that says John did it, here’s where John is, they go get John. John is arrested for the murder of that person. That’s $2,500.”
It is the board’s decision on the range of pay, Story said.
Animal control calls
One of the new dropdown menu features is animal control crimes, Story said, which used to fall under the category called other crimes.
Roanoke Rapids police Detective Brian Biggerstaff said county animal control initially came forward and wanted to be associated with Crimestoppers and then the city’s animal control was added. “They get a lot of tips. These tips are pretty thorough with the information they provide. They take photos of the animals from time to time.”
For instance, Roanoke Rapids Animal Control Officer Pete Wilson is very quick to go out, Biggerstaff said. “He goes out pretty quickly and finds out what he can do about the situation. Nine times out of 10, everything’s OK but he enjoys getting the tips and tries to find out if any animal is being mistreated.”
Design and ‘A great thing for the county’
The Computer Guy & Company of Roanoke Rapids designed the website, Story said. “It was beautiful work and a great company to deal with. We never had a moment where we couldn’t get a hold of them. They were always available and really and truly went above and beyond on this.”
Story believes the new website will be a great thing for the county. “I think what it’s going to allow us to do is to become an example to the rest of the state and the country of how this type of payout system will serve your citizens best.”
There’s two goals, he said — “Bring the tips in so law enforcement can act on them. We can get justice to the families, we can have some closure for some of these families. And the next goal is to get these tipsters paid so they continue to do business. They can continue to tell us the information we need to accomplish all of those number one goals.”
