Crime Stoppers overwhelmed with web tips after park attack
INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — The Crime Stoppers of Central Indiana website has been able to take tips for about a year but this is the first time the organization has seen the majority of tips on one case come through online.
“We’ve never had that many web tips at one time. Literally I had to stay up all last night just to keep up,” Director of Crime Stoppers of Central Indiana Steve Dubois said.
Dubois said he rarely ever sees the number of tips for one case that he’s seen this weekend, after a beating in an Indianapolis park was taped and posted online.
“We’re at 200 and counting on the tips and usually you might get four or five,” he said.
And this is the first time in their history that most of the tips came through a “non-voice” channel, like their website and Facebook.
“I would guess 95 percent of our traffic on this incident was through the web,” Dubois said.
Dubois believes more tipsters chose the web in this case because the tips included data that made sense to share in an online format.
“A lot of the tipsters went to great lengths to find out who had posted this video on their own,” he said. “Most of the tips included URLs, pictures, sites to go to see the video.”
But he said this could also be an indicator that computer based tips are the future of crime reporting.
“That’s why the web tipping came about is because we realized there was this untapped resource out there and this case obviously proves it,” he said.
Days after the incident in the park, Dubois is still sifting through incoming tips.
So many have been submitted that Crime Stoppers has asked the public to stop sending them, unless there is new information.
Crime Stoppers has sent most of their tips to the IMPD’s computer and digital forensic unit because they included links to Facebook pages, YouTube accounts and other forms of digital information.
Dubois said he hasn’t received any information from IMPD about which if any of the tips have been used.
No one has been arrested yet for this particular case.
