Crime Stoppers returns, but its success rides on you

Crime Stoppers returns,
but its success rides on you

Crime Stoppers is back in business in the Mahoning Valley. We welcome its return, encourage its expansion and urge residents to make it as an effective crime-fighting tool as it can be.

Crime Stoppers, however, is only one of many weapons that residents and law enforcement agencies alike must embrace to help lower the region’s intolerably high crime rate and to deter would-be hooligans, thieves, gangbangers and killers.

Its premise is simple. The Greater Youngstown Crime Stoppers solicits the help of residents unafraid to assist police in solving high-profile but difficult cases. It offers cash rewards to anyone furnishing information that leads to arrests. All tipsters are guaranteed 100 percent anonymity.

Each week The Vindicator and the program’s broadcast partners feature crimes of the week, Residents are then asked to call (330) 746-CLUE if they have information that could spur an arrest.

This week, for example, Crime Stoppers seeks the suburban terrorist who targeted the home of Youngstown State University President David Sweet. At least eight shots were fired into the Liberty Township house while Sweet and his wife were out of town last month.

Worldwide, the Crime Stoppers program has enjoyed great success since it was conceived in 1976 in Albuquerque, N.M. CS International boasts a conviction rate of approximately 95 percent on cases solved by tips to the program.

Unfortunately, the program has lain dormant in the Youngstown area for several years as funding sources from private donors all but dried up. It’s therefore encouraging to see sufficient private seed money accumulated to form a board of directors and plans to secure stable funding by enacting a $1 fee on all criminal cases in common pleas, municipal and county courts in Mahoning County. Commissioners should enact the fee post haste.

Why has it succeeded?

We suspect the success of Crime Stoppers is due in large part to its intent to battle common obstacles to solving particularly heinous and uncrackable cases: fear of reprisal and apathy.

First, the 100 percent assurance of anonymity provides added comfort and psychological incentive for the public to step forward.

Second, the assurance that the tip could well lead to sizable reward money ($5,000 in the Sweet case, for example) would help to counter the all-too-common tendency of turning a blind eye to crime and mayhem.

With CS’s proven track record, we encourage the board of the revived local program to push forward with plans to expand it to all of Mahoning, Trumbull and Columbiana counties. Just as crime crosses the borders of the three counties, so must the work of Crime Stoppers.

Most importantly, Valley residents must be willing to make the program succeed. In an ideal world, programs like Crime Stoppers would not be needed. People would unselfishly contact police with critical information on crimes without expecting either anonymity or a cash bonus.

But ours is not an ideal world. To the extent that Crime Stoppers can motivate even one otherwise button-lipped crime witness to come forth with information that gets one culprit behind bars, Crime Stoppers is worth every penny in fee money it will generate and reward money it will dole out.