Outgoing Cayman Crime Stoppers Chairman Eric Bush said he’s generally happy with the community’s awareness about his organisation.
“I think everybody knows that Cayman Crime Stoppers exists and can find the number easily enough, if they want to,” Bush says. “It’s just finding that connection.”
Crime Stoppers has two major problems: first, in establishing its credibility as a confidential place to provide information, and second in convincing members of the younger generation to start using it.
Bush says both issues need work as the crime fighting programme moves forward.
“The low points for us occur when we don’t see traffic coming through the call centre,” he says. “People may say that statistics show that crime is falling, but we know that Cayman continues to have a drug problem.”
Bush says Crime Stoppers received more than 70 tip calls at its call centre locations in Florida and Canada last year, but more recently calls to the tip line have slowed.
Despite the dozens of calls received last year alone, Bush says rewards of less than US $10,000 were paid during his nearly two years as Crime Stoppers Board Chairman. Typically, Crime Stoppers rewards are up to $1,000 and Bush says there were fewer than 10 recipients of those payments during his time as chairman.
In most cases, Crime Stoppers tipsters either don’t call back to collect their rewards, or have no interest in doing so, Bush says.
The call process
When someone calls 800-8477 (TIPS) the person speaking to them on the other end of the line, either in Florida or in Canada, is a trained police officer. They will take down any information provided and ask questions about the case, but Bush says they never ask anything that could identify the person.
At the end of the call, the person is given a code number that they can use to track progress in their case.
After receiving the information the call taker sends it to a law enforcement officer in the Cayman Islands who essential serves as the Crime Stoppers coordinator. It is that officer’s responsibility to disseminate the information to the appropriate agency and update the case file for review by the call centre.
“Any call taker in Miami or Canada enters [the case] number and sees the updated portion and sees what’s been done about the call,” Bush says.
If the call leads to an arrest and conviction of a suspect or the recovery of a firearm or drugs, the caller can be eligible for a reward. However, that caller must take the initiative to pursue the cash since Crime Stoppers has no way of contacting them.
The Crime Stoppers Board of Directors must also consider each reward individually and whether a tip call warrants payment. If that decision is made, the tipster can then call back the 800-8477 number to collect.
“The caller then asks ‘how much am I eligible for?’ – let’s say it’s $800,” Bush says. “The call taker says ‘how would you like it delivered?”
This is the tricky part. Bush says some callers have just given a bank account number and have the money routed there. In certain cases, more clandestine methods have been used.
“We have delivered a small bag of cash under a park bench and we’ve left it and hoped for the best,” he says. “We’re not going to stick around and see who the individual is.”
Once the cash is “dropped off”, that’s the end of it, Bush says.
Using tips
A Crime Stoppers tip must be used carefully by police, Bush says. Simply because someone calls in and states a person has an illegal firearm in their home doesn’t mean police can immediately conduct a raid.
“The laws in the Cayman Islands allow police to enter a premises for illegal firearms and property through a search warrant,” he says. “[Judges and JPs] understand that the level of information that is given from Crime Stoppers is unsubstantiated. If they’ve used that information alone…the chances are it would not break the threshold of a search warrant.”
But Bush says tipsters shouldn’t take this as an indication that the information they provide isn’t useful.
“If anything this is information to guide police where to look,” he says. “I think people underestimate the amount of information they have…just one piece is sometimes all it takes.”
He acknowledges the process of formalising this data is often a problem in the Cayman Islands.
“People talk about [crimes], but when you start covering it with an official presence, people start to clam up,” Bush says. “Going to court, fulfilling your civic duty….can be burdensome. Some people in our society may not be willing to fulfil that duty…without perhaps understanding the ripple effect of not understanding that responsibility.”
Support needed
People are usually asked to help the Royal Cayman Islands Police Service solve crimes by calling Crime Stoppers to anonymously report what they know.
Now the public is being asked to help support Crime Stoppers in carrying on its mission.
“We’d like to have an organisation rather than just a small group of individuals who care about the community and are trying to do the best they can,” Bush says..
Bush and other members of the Crime Stoppers Board have said that they were frustrated more people in the community didn’t seem to want to come forward a join the organisation as either members or on the board.
Essentially, he said there was too much work for too few people to do.
There are about 25 registered members of the organisation, but at most meetings, it’s just the board.
“I think one member turned up to the [annual general] meeting last year,” says Ronan Guilfoyle, a long-time member of the Crime Stoppers Board.
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