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'Text-A-Tip' is newest tool to fight crime

0 Comments | Buffalo News, May 25, 2010 | by Lou Michel

R u red-e?

"Text-A-Tip" starts at 8 a.m. Wednesday, providing citizens yet another way to provide the Buffalo Police Department information on criminal activity.

Hoping to dial into a generation more comfortable with texting than making anonymous calls to the police telephone TIP-CALL line, Mayor Byron W. Brown and interim Police Commissioner Daniel Derenda said Monday that texting tips and sending electronic photos or videos will help make the city safer and build upon a partnership with citizens.

The number to text a tip is 847-2255, the same one for anonymous calls by voice.

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"Citizens have been saying they want to be empowered to make our city safer," Brown said, adding that texting tips is already a "best practice" in several other big cities.

"Police in Chicago were looking for a sex offender and put the word out, and someone saw the offender and sent in his photo, and police were dispatched and picked up the individual," the mayor said.

Chicago police have been getting an estimated 500 texted tips a year on homicides, Derenda said. Other cities with this method of collecting information include Seattle, San Francisco and, closer to home, St. Catharines, Ont., he said.

"I was driving home from my son's hockey tournament, and there was a big billboard in St. Catharines urging people to text tips to police," Derenda said.

Since the Buffalo TIP-CALL line started in 2006, an average of 4,000 calls are received annually and have helped police solve many crimes, including the hit-and-run accident last week involving a pregnant woman outside Mercy Hospital in South Buffalo, Derenda said.

"We received the name of the driver in that case," he said.

Of concern that texters often type messages in an abbreviated manner, Brown said, "Our personnel are conversant in the text language lingo."

Brown added that texting "could possibly tap into another segment of the population for tips, and we're all for that."

The phone numbers of citizens who call in tips and, starting Wednesday, text them are automatically blocked to ensure anonymity, Chief of Detectives Dennis J. Richards said.

However, "if someone leaves contact information, we will be more than happy to get back to them," Richards said, adding that police need witnesses who are willing to testify in court.

e-mail: lmichel@buffnews.com