Sometimes, it pays to know about crime.
Denton County Crime Stoppers is a program that offers anonymous tipsters financial compensation based on the quality of the tip and the severity of the incident.
“Anything can happen to any one of us,” said Lori Nelson, who is on the Denton County Crime Stoppers board and cohosts the podcast Denton County: Unsolved.
With the crowd at the PointBank Business Breakfast in Pilot Point on April 22 in mind, Nelson said, she tailored her presentation to how Crime Stoppers can benefi t small business owners in improving the safety and security of their businesses.
“The biggest impact to your bottom line that you cannot prepare for is crime,” she said. “I think that small businesses feel that impact of crime so much faster than a big corporation.”
The organization finds that criminals often avoid areas where they were previously caught.
Anonymity for those who submit tips is also helpful, Nelson said.
“We don’t know gender; we don’t know location; we don’t know age; we don’t know name, email, IP address,” Nelson said. “We don’t know anything about the people who make tips.”
That layer of anonymity, Nelson said, can protect against retaliation in both personal and professional settings.
“As a business owner, [if] you witness drug deals going down in the parking lot, you don’t necessarily want to walk out there and be like, ‘Could y’all take that somewhere else?’” Nelson said.
It also means the tip can’t be traced to cause the tipster to become part of the court process.
“Now, I can say that if you say in a report, ‘My neighbor at this address,’ you give up your own anonymity,” Nelson said.
“There’s some issues with that.”
A tip called into the Denton County Crime Stoppers unit doesn’t stop there if it applies to a crime beyond Denton County’s borders.
“They figure out where the crime happened or where the tip is talking about and get it up to the right jurisdiction,” she said. “That jurisdiction takes that tip, investigates it. If it leads to an arrest, they get back to the sheriff’s office deputy and say, ‘Hey, by the way, we arrested that guy, and here’s the information about that arrest.’” Nelson encouraged people to tag Denton County Crime Stoppers on social media to help get tips filtered to the organization.
“If anyone knows who this is, please report that to Crime Stoppers or share that with your local law enforcement,” Nelson said. “… Because, what if it’s that guy’s family member or what if it’s that guy’s neighbor that recognizes him and doesn’t necessarily want to call him out directly.”
Payouts for quality tips are handled using an anonymous ID code and passcode number that can be taken to a local bank to access the money with no personal identification information required because “the proof is that they have that passcode.”
“The higher the value, the more money we pay out,” Nelson said, adding that the nonprofit uses a point system to determine the value. “… We pay up to $2,000. That’s our cap.”
For more information or to submit a tip, visit dentoncountycrimestoppers. com or download the P3 app.
Tips can also be submitted by phone at 1-800-3888477.
