HOULTON, Maine — For 28 years, Aroostook County Crime Stoppers has been a significant asset to law enforcement agencies in the region, leading to the successful arrest of scores of arsonists, drug smugglers, burglars and vandals.
Started in The County as a nonprofit organization, Crime Stoppers is a program that promotes community cooperation with law enforcement by allowing witnesses to anonymously report information on felony crimes.
Anyone who provides information that leads to a grand jury indictment on a crime is eligible for a $1,000 reward.
Aroostook County Sheriff Darrell Crandall said during a recent interview that he is “very proud” of the work the sheriff’s office has done with Crime Stoppers.
But Crandall and Chief Deputy Shawn Gillen, who is in charge of the program, are exploring ways in which they can better use social media to get information about their cases out quicker and to a wider audience to possibly make fighting crime even easier.
Aroostook County has the only active Crime Stoppers program in Maine, though there is one in operation in New Brunswick, Canada.
Crime Stoppers has an annual budget of about $3,000, according to Crandall, with most of its funding being raised through an annual golf tournament held each year.
Callers to the toll-free telephone tip line, 1-800-638-8477, can leave their tip on the automated system and are assigned a number in return. The caller doesn’t need to leave a name or number but is urged to call back after a certain amount of time to check whether the tip was used successfully in solving a crime, Crandall said. If it was, a payout is arranged, he said. A board of directors is responsible for handing out cash awards.
“The theory behind it is that the person may not want to be called as a witness,” Gillen said. “They can just give the tip over the phone anonymously.”
For the most part, Gillen said, the $1,000 award goes to one person. But there have been cases where there have been split awards or a caller has received a smaller award.
“When we first started, a lot of the larger cash rewards were for tips related to arson, insurance fraud and drug seizures,” Crandall said. “Marijuana seizure was a big one. People would stumble upon marijuana being grown somewhere in the woods and report it to us anonymously and receive the payout.”
Now, he said, there is a larger focus on cross border smuggling of drugs for Crime Stoppers cases.
Crandall said that since 1987, the value of illegal drugs seized by law enforcement through the Crime Stoppers program totals about $8.8 million.
The sheriff’s office has recovered $1.13 million in stolen property since the program began and paid out $69,345 in awards to those who have called in tips.
“Shawn is working with the Crime Stoppers board to revitalize it,” Crandall said. “He is taking a look at using social media to get information out there sooner.”
He said Gillen also is asking other law enforcement agencies to participate more by sending more cases to Crime Stoppers to be featured as crimes of the month, something he has not had much luck with in the past.
“This is a countywide program, so we want to make greater use of it,” he said. “We know other agencies are busy, but they are not being as responsive as we would like.”
Gillen said a recent example of the revamping of Crime Stoppers occurred when instead of deciding to focus on a felony level crime the sheriff’s office decided to choose five people who were wanted on outstanding warrants. Gillen said police put their names and pictures up through the media and on social media and shortly thereafter had captured three out of five of the suspects wanted on warrants.
“That is something I think we are going to do again,” Crandall said.
Since its creation, the program has led to the arrest of 493 people, according to statistics provided by the sheriff’s office.
“The numbers we have achieved over the years are numbers we can be proud of,” Crandall said. “I think that it has provided a foundation we can keep building on. Crime Stoppers is a program that we definitely want to keep within our department and want to keep out there in the community.”