By MATT PIKE
St. Joseph Post
Officials with the St. Joseph Police Department are urging residents to use the TIPS hotline to report crimes after seeing a severe decline in usage.
Officer Greg Lewis, an evidence technician, says when the TIPS hotline launched the department received an average of 50 calls a month, but lately that's dropped to around 20 to 25 a month.
Lewis says he thinks a lot of that decline can be attributed to social media.
"These days there's a lot of Facebook pages that are crime catch pages, and a lot of that information that normally in the past would have went through the TIPS hotline, information someone might have had, they see someone post something on Facebook or whatever, so they just add to that post and put information there," Lewis tells host of the KFEQ Hotline Barry Birr.
Police Chief Paul Luster says there's a misconception that the department constantly has someone monitoring those pages on social media.
"We don't, we don't have the personnel for that and the validity of a lot of that information can be questioned very easily and it's not considered a great source when we're trying to make a criminal case against somebody," Luster explains.
Luster says it's not accurate for residents to think that because they put something on social media his officers saw it
"The TIPS hotline or the online platform is much more preferred by us," Luster says.
Luster says getting reports through the hotline from residents also helps his department work more efficiently in investigations.
Lewis says a post to a crime stopper page on Facebook is no substitute to using the TIPS line.
"We'd love nothing more than to get the information out to the public to use the 238-TIPS hotline, love to see our numbers get back up to where they were 10, 15, 20 years ago when we were getting 50 plus tips a month," Lewis says. "Would like to pay rewards."
The Greater St. Joseph Crime Stoppers do offer rewards to residents who use the TIPS hotline of up to $1,000, which Lewis reminds residents you won't get on Facebook.
There are options to utilize the TIPS hotline, including calling 238-TIPS, going online to P3TIPS.com or by downloading the P3 TIPS app on your phone.