Crimestoppers UK

Starting in 2013, the charity and police forces across the country distributed "scratch and sniff" cards to the public to educate and inform them about the signs to spot and the specific smell of cannabis when it is growing. The campaign was designed to target cultivation by criminal gangs so hot spot areas, as informed by police intelligence, were targeted by 17 police forces throughout England and Wales. Due to the campaign, information passed to Crimestoppers on cannabis cultivation contributed to new cannabis farms being discovered and a number of arrests.[4]

Crime figures show a substantial rise in reported fraud, boosted by a rise in identity theft and online scams costing the UK economy £63m per year. To help tackle these crimes, the charity has created a Game of Fraud website, featuring a survey with information on a variety of frauds, including romance fraud, courier fraud and online shopping fraud. Through a series of short questions, the quiz identifies which fraud types members of the public may be most vulnerable to and gives a detailed description of how they may be targeted.[5]

Crimestoppers asks the public to help prevent human trafficking by passing on anonymously any information they have, no matter how small, about forced labour exploitation. Human trafficking is the second most profitable crime type in the world, second only to drugs, with an annual trade value of around $32 billion. Hundreds of men, women and children are identified as potential victims of labour trafficking in the UK each year, and the figure is rising.[6]

Crimestoppers originated in Albuquerque, USA in 1976 when a young man was shot dead during a robbery at a filling station, and having made little headway in finding the perpetrator, police decided to set up an anonymous phone line for witnesses to come forward with information. Within 72 hours, arrests were made, but what amazed the New Mexico police was the number of people giving information on other, unrelated crimes. So the Crimestoppers concept was born.[13][14]

Six years later Detective Inspector Mike Cole from Norfolk Constabulary, learnt about the scheme on a police visit to Peoria, in Illinois. He was impressed with how information was given anonymously, and also how callers giving information that led to an arrest put themselves in line for a reward payment from money donated by local businesses.

On his return to Great Yarmouth, Mike submitted a report to his chief superintendent and the chief constable, who gave their approval for a Norfolk scheme. However, it was by chance that Jim Carter, the manager of the local Woolworths, subsequently received a letter from Chief Superintendent Peter Howse asking for support. When Jim followed up on this letter and learnt about the Crimestoppers scheme, he saw it as a good opportunity to get the community involved in crime-fighting.

Other areas around the UK also learned of Crimestoppers and took it up around this time but there was no national, co-ordinated approach.

In 1985, PC Keith Blakelock was murdered during the riots at the Broadwater Farm Estate in London and the police appealed for information, stating that people knew who had been responsible but were frightened of coming forward.

Michael Ashcroft (now Lord Ashcroft, KCMG and Chairman of the Trustees of Crimestoppers), a businessman, offered to provide the police with money for a reward to encourage somebody to come forward with information. This led to discussions with the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, resulting in Ashcroft founding the establishment of a national operation in the UK in January 1988. He set up the charity and, together with some business colleagues who were also concerned about the rise in violent crime, they funded the UK operation calling it the Community Action Trust.

In many ITV regions, such as HTV, Granada, Thames and Tyne-Tees, appeals were broadcast at various times of the day but usually aired at around 15:25 or 18:25 on weekdays and after the live First Division Football match on Sundays from 1992 to the early 2000s when appeals were shown less on TV. A moving mouth montage on a grey background with the words Crime (in red) and Stoppers (in white) plus a theme composed by Rupert Gregson-Williams opened the appeal which would then feature a brief police reconstruction before showing the 0800 555 111 appeal telephone number.

The charity was renamed the Crimestoppers Trust in 1995; by then it had expanded to cover the whole of the UK as the other Crimestoppers’ schemes foundered or were encompassed within the charity. Initially, the administrative organisation was based on ITV regions, but the best model proved to be local county-based committees working in partnership with single police forces. The roll-out of this structure continues; there are now 44 volunteer committees across the UK.

Ashcroft has been Chairman of the Trustees of Crimestoppers for the last 20 years and remains a core donor to the charity.[15]

For most of 2015 the Crimestoppers online reporting website, touted as secure and anonymous, received an "F" rating in industry standard security tests, using obsolete 20-year-old protocols that made it fundamentally insecure. Crimestoppers fixed these problems in November 2015, ahead of the National Crime Agency and Independent Police Complaints Commission, which still had unfixed problems of the same magnitude at that date.[16]