Crime Stoppers is asking your help to keep our anonymous tip program active and dynamic in the U.S. Virgin Islands. If you know something, please do something this week for all of us.
This is the first weekly release of our fourth year of reaching out to the Virgin Islands community. On January 9, 2009 our 1-800-222-TIPS phone number became fully functional, operated by a professional, totally anonymous Crime Stoppers answering service in Texas. In the three years since, our media partners have published, aired, and televised over 150 weekly releases. You in the community have submitted 1,435 tips, which have helped our law enforcement officers make 147 additional arrests, recover 80 illegal guns, as well as over $280,000 in stolen property and drugs.
This week, please visit the "Support Us" page on our website, www.CrimeStoppersUSVI.org, to learn how you can support our rewards fund. To date, we’ve authorized 130 rewards totaling $108,386, and paid out 57 of those rewards amounting to $46,188, for valuable information that has, in fact, helped make our community a safer place to live, work and raise a family.
If you have any experience with law enforcement organizations, or if you have office or bookkeeping skills or enjoy speaking to groups of children or adults, please consider offering a bit of your time to our volunteer effort. Visit the "Contact Us" page on our website for our administrative email address and phone number.
Our Annual Meeting, open to all dues-paying members, is coming up again in June. We will have several board member positions open for election. Again, if you have any interest in learning more about how you can join us in our work for a safer community, check out the information on our website at www.CrimeStoppersUSVI.org.
The volunteers at Crime Stoppers USVI thank all of you: law enforcement, the media, our financial sponsors, and of course you, the concerned citizen who have submitted information about crimes. Thank you all for working together with us for three successful years. We sincerely hope that this, our fourth year of service, will be one of unprecedented peace in the U.S. Virgin Islands.