The Mt. Lebanon Police Department is increasing its crime-fighting arsenal with a new app to help residents connect with the department to find information, receive and view alerts, and submit anonymous tips from their smartphone.
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A tip to Atlantic City’s anonymous texting system led to drugs, guns and five arrests.
Thursday morning, police received texts from an unknown person to tip411 that handguns were inside a room at the Madison Hotel, Sgt. Kevin Fair said.
That sparked an investigation by Detective Ermindo Marsini at the hotel on the beach block of Dr. Martin Luther King Boulevard.
Abdul Bobo-Moore, 22, ran when detectives tried to stop him leaving the hotel, Fair said.
He didn’t get far, and had heroin on him, according to the charges, which include possession with intent to distribute and obstruction of justice.
In an apartment inside the Madison, police arrested four teenagers, Fair said.
Azyiah Henry, 18, of Mays Landing, was charged with possession, possession with intent to distribute and possession within 500 feet of a public zone.
Omar Law, 18, of Atlantic City and a 17-year-old Mays Landing girl were charged with drug possession. The girl also was charged with possession of drug paraphernalia.
A 16-year-old boy, also from Mays Landing, was found in possession of a loaded handgun magazine.
Detectives also found a loaded handgun inside the apartment. That will be sent to the
New Jersey State Police crime lab for further analysis, Fair said.
Detectives recovered 110 individual bags of heroin and 25 grams of marijuana in total.
The three adults were released on summonses. The two minors were released to their parents with future court dates.
Tip411 allows people to have an anonymous conversation with police by texting tip411 (847411) beginning with ACPD.
Information may also be called in to police at 609-347-5858.
Lack of witness cooperation has been a frustration for Benton Harbor Public Safety Director Dan McGinnis throughout his law enforcement career.
He hopes that use of a new, customized, crime-fighting smartphone app will help residents get involved. The tip411 system, which will be available to Benton Harbor residents within four weeks, is 100 percent anonymous, McGinnis said Friday.
McGinnis stresses that it is not intended to replace 911. He said residents in an emergency situation should continue to call 911. But someone witnessing a minor incident or having delayed information about a major incident should use the tip411 app. Residents in Benton Harbor without a smartphone will be able to text an anonymous tip to police via a cell phone by texting keyword BHPD to 847411 (tip411).
“This is not to replace 911,” McGinnis said. “But sometimes, if people want to be anonymous, they get frustrated if they call 911 to report something and a dispatcher starts asking a battery of questions when the person just wants to have the police come. People get frustrated and hang up.”
The app will allow residents to find information, view alerts, report crimes as they happen, and submit anonymous tips from their smartphone. The technology removes all identifying information before police see the tips, and there is no way to identify the sender.
“Our mission is to partner with the community to solve problems and improve public safety in a manner that is fair, impartial, transparent and consistent,” McGinnis said. “We believe our new tip411 app will help engage residents to partner with us and help fight crime.”
McGinnis said he does not know all the reasons people are uncooperative or unwilling to report crimes or provide witness testimony. He said a common reason is fear of retaliation. Although in reality, he said, that typically does not happen.
“Or sometimes they’re just apathetic. We have people who are victims and they will not name the perpetrator. It’s a cultural thing,” he said.
Developed by tip411, the app will improve the public’s access to agency alerts, social media channels and important information, tip411 President Terry Halsch stated in a news release.
“We’ve listened to feedback from partners like Benton Harbor and have built a more advanced and innovative product to help departments better engage their communities,” he said.
McGinnis said as soon as the app is available for residents to download, it will be announced through traditional media and social media.
Benton Harbor residents will soon be able to report suspicious activity through tip411, a smartphone app that allows people to report activities anonymously.
Public Safety Director Dan McGinnis said he wants to help citizens feel safe communicating with law enforcement.
“The company that does this will not reveal the person’s name,” he said.
He said they have talked to people who know who shot them, but won’t tell the police.
“We had a person who had been murdered, who was done in front of people who actually took him to the hospital and none of them wanted step up and speak,” he said.
McGinnis said it’s a chance to let people communicate on their own terms.
“We just need the information,” he said. “We don’t care where it come from in most cases. But if we don’t get it, it makes it hard for us to protect your neighborhoods.”
In addition, he said the app will allow the department to send out alerts if needed.
After the meeting, Deputy Director Mike Clark said residents will be notified, when the app is ready, about how to download and use it through the city’s website and a news release. He didn’t know how long it will take to launch the app.
During the meeting, McGinnis said one of the things residents sometimes want to report anonymously is illegal dumping.
McGinnis declared war on illegal dumping about two weeks ago. Anyone who sees someone suspected of illegal dumping can call the new dumping hotline at 944-7929.
“It’s absolutely appalling,” he said.
He said a state Department of Environmental Quality investigator last week found five automobile repair shops that didn’t have the proper paperwork, showing that they legally disposed of scrap tires.
“They are on notice,” he said. “… The tire situation is absolutely horrendous. We have hundreds and hundreds of tires in ravines.”
McGinnis said they have made 13 arrests concerning illegal dumping since the last City Commission meeting.
UPDATE: August 12, 2019
Crime Prevention Officer Caitlin Horne shared the following with us as ongoing proof of the success of Bismarck PD’s tip411 system:
“Below are two cases where tip411 played a HUGE ROLE as it appears more and more people are turning away from using our Facebook page as a place to say who the suspect(s) are as their names would be attached to it and they cannot stay anonymous on Facebook. I know we have many more success stories, but these are two where we got many tips in a fast timeframe and were able to solve the cases quickly.”
tip411 interviewed Officer Caitlin Horne of the Bismarck, North Dakota Police Department.
Q: Tell us about your community and the Bismarck Police Department (how many residents, how many sworn, etc.).
A: Bismarck’s population is over 72,000 people and, in 2017, Forbes Magazine ranked Bismarck as the 7thfastest-growing small city in the United States. The Bismarck Police Department currently has 129 sworn officers and continues to hire more when budget allows.Our Department is a full service agency that handles anything from an animal call to a homicide or aggravated assault.
Bismarck is constantly growing and expanding, and we have seen an influx of individuals coming to our area for employment opportunities. With that said, we have also seen an uptick in illegal activity which makes tip411 a great program to have in our department.
Q: How did you hear about tip411?
A: tip411 staff came to the Bismarck Police Department a couple of years ago and did a demonstration of what they could bring to our agency. There was a webinar put on and, after speaking to other agencies that have tip411, we decided it was ultimately the best program out there that would benefit not only our department but allow the community to be more involved with our every day activities.
Q: How is tip411 administered in your department (responsibilities, protocols, etc.)?
A: There are three ways a citizen can report a tip. One way is through the Bismarck PD app. The second is through our departments website, and the third way is that residents can access the program on our website.
As of now, I review the tips that come in during the daytime hours, Monday-Friday, and will distribute them to the investigator in charge of the case they relate to. All supervisors and patrol commanders have access to the program after hours and are able to see all the tips that come in.
With the program being so new to our community (we just recently launched in January 2019), we are still receiving many of what we consider “in progress” calls on tip411. With Patrol Commanders having access to this program during the night hours, they are able to constantly check the status of any tip and determine if it is a call they need to respond to during their working shift or if it is something that can wait until the day time hours.
Q: How has the tip411 system aided your department?
A: Just in the last two months, we believe tip411 has become a critical and essential tool to this Police Department. We take many reports from our citizens where they ask to remain anonymous and they have been deterred in the past from calling us because they don’t want to be involved in the report. tip411 gives our citizens the opportunity to report activity to us anonymously and help our department crack down on crime.
Q: Any notable tips/arrests credited to tip411 that come to mind?
A: When we first launched tip411, we got multiple tips on the location and sightings of a juvenile runaway as well as numerous tips on the possible identities of suspects in a huge ring of felony cases.
Q: What have you done to promote your tip411 system to make sure residents know about it and use it?
A: One of our main goals is to have a positive interaction with our community. We are fortunate to have so many citizens in the Bismarck area support our department and have close to 27,000 people following our Facebook page.
Our Crime Analysist works very hard to keep our Facebook page updated throughout the year. She tries to keep the citizens up to date on current cases we are trying to solve and request that citizens help with identifying the suspects.
Before tip411, most of our tips came from our Facebook page. We would ask the community to help identify a suspect(s) and we would get a great number of people willing to help. The biggest problem we saw was our citizens were wanting to help us and give us information but they did not want to be associated with the case and be looked at as a “nark” and, unfortunately with Facebook, as much as you make your profile private, there is always ways around it.
Now with tip411, our community is able to interact with us in another, completely anonymous, way and it’s much more beneficial for them as well as our agency. I believe the longer tip411 is in use by our agency, the stronger the trust of the community will become and our bond with the community will continue to grow.
We have links on our Facebook page and our website along with a billboard right by our Police Department which shows people how they can use the tip411 app to send us tips. Our local news stations have also done stories on tip411 and have helped us reach out to our community on how to properly use the system.
Q: Any advice for other departments considering tip411?
A: There is no better time than right now to gain the trust and respect from your community. tip411 gives you that opportunity to build trust with community members who might be on the fence about law enforcement in general. In my eyes, giving the community another way to reach out to law enforcement can only make a stronger bond between the two.
