Crime Stoppers of Grey Bruce will continue to operate after its board decided to restructure to alleviate some cost pressures.
The organization’s Chairperson Peter Reid says the organization’s volunteer board will oversee a substantial restructuring that will reduce its budget by almost 50 per cent, and the public experience with the core tips service will be essentially unchanged.
He says one change that’s happening is Crime Stoppers of Grey Bruce will be relying on the National Anonymous Call Centre service to handle phone calls to Crime Stoppers Grey Bruce, but web tips will continued to be processed by the local team.
“And the majority of tips now come online and not through phone, so it won’t make a difference to the majority of people,” Reid says.
Reid warned this past summer the regional Crime Stoppers organization was at risk of shutting down because of a lack of funding and volunteers. Since then, Reid says they’ve managed to raise about $7,000 — mostly because of a fundraising initiative a former Crime Stoppers of Grey Bruce board member Len Metcalfe who launched a $500 challenge. He donated that amount of money and challenged others to do the same. Several businesses and private donors took up the offer and chipped in to support Crime Stoppers.
Crime Stoppers of Grey Bruce also receives financial support from the Owen Sound, Saugeen Shores and Hanover Police Services boards. But Reid says Ontario Provincial Police pulled its support of Crime Stoppers of Grey Bruce in 2016, and hasn’t brought it back since.
“Until 2016 we had a full-time officer from OPP assigned to the program who worked out of our office. And the OPP withdrew that support and Crime Stoppers has had to pay one full-time employee to fill that void,” Reid says.
Crime Stoppers of Grey Bruce plays a vital role in helping police services in the region solve crimes through its tips service. Reid says in just the last year, $590,000 worth of drugs and proceeds of crime were seized by police in Bruce and Grey counties because of Crime Stoppers tips and $117,000 in stolen property has been recovered.
Since 1987, Reid says more than $55-million in drugs, cash and property has been seized by police in Grey Bruce alone, thanks to Crime Stoppers tips.
“The numbers are huge,” Reid says.
Reid says the organization is now stable going forward with its core tips service, but remains unable to provide some other programs he’d like to see.
“Educational outreach and providing more information to the public, but our core program will continue on,” he says.
Crime Stoppers of Grey Bruce continues to search for additional volunteer board members, Reid adds.
“We’re looking for people with fundraising experience. We’d love to have someone who could step up as secretary or treasurer,” Reid says. “Anyone who’s interested in the program and has some time to commit to it, we’d definitely like to talk too.”
You can view the Crime Stoppers of Grey Bruce tip submission page here. The phone number for tips is 1-800-222-8477.