Charity at heart of fight against crime

A CHARITY which has put thousands of criminals behind bars has received its millionth call.

Since being set up in 1988, Crimestoppers has helped the police to catch more than 85,000 suspects with information passed anonymously.

Nearly 800 people have been charged with murder and officers have recovered drugs worth £150 million and seized £102 million in goods.

However, despite what many people believe, Crimestoppers is not a police service. It is a charity which gathers information to help investigations.


THE chief constable of Merseyside, Mr Bernard Hogan-Howe, is a huge fan of Crimestoppers.

He said: “Crimestoppers is incredible. It is such a simple idea.

“The police service has three ways to detect crime — catch them at the scene, forensics or someone tells us who did it.

“Crimestoppers helps the public to tell the police who did it.”

In Greater Manchester, the charity received 5,778 actionable calls — ones resulting in useful information being passed to the police — between April, 2007, and March, 2008.

Councillor Mark Alcock of Shaw is a member of the Greater Manchester Police Authority.

He said: “Anything that helps to catch criminals and stop crime has to be applauded.

“Crimestoppers has been a fantastic success. But it is a charity, so all donations are welcome.”

Officials of the charity say that in the past six months people from the Oldham area have made 255 actionable calls, resulting in 25 arrests.

Oldham is third from the top in the 11 Greater Manchester police divisions in terms of actionable Crimestoppers calls.

A spokeswoman said: “There has been a significant increase in arrests year on year for the Oldham area. In January to June, 2008, there were 25 arrests compared with five the previous year.”

Chief Insp Sarah Jones from Oldham police said: “Crimestoppers provides an excellent vehicle for people to give us information on criminal activity without compromising their safety or anonymity.

“Over the years intelligence provided through them has supported our fight against crime and helped to bring a wide range of criminals to justice.

“I would urge people to continue to use it to report criminal and suspicious activity and help us to make Oldham a safer place.”

Crimestoppers’ founder, Conservative Party deputy chairman Lord Ashcroft, praised the millionth call landmark.

He said: “I never dreamed for a moment that we would reach this incredible milestone.

“It is testimony to the success of Crimestoppers and the impact we are making in helping the police to solve crimes and make our communities safer.”

Crimestoppers says information it provides contributes to one person being charged every five days.

In its first year, it received 5,000 calls giving useful information to its free, confidential helpline.

That figure had increased more than 81,000 last year.

Senior police officers have praised it for helping to make Britain’s streets safer.

Metropolitan Police assistant commissioner John Yates said: “Often people do not want to give information directly to police, or they want to remain anonymous.

“So it is critical that communities are able to access the service that Crimestoppers provides.

“I cannot emphasise enough how important the information that people give to Crimestoppers is to us.” Crimestoppers’ director of operations, Dave Cording, said the majority of calls over the years had been about drug crimes.

But he added: “It is telling that our millionth actionable call relates to a knife-crime incident, reflecting the gun and knife-crime issue that is sweeping large parts of our country at the moment.”