Pssst! Here’s a Hot Tip on Fighting Crime

The callers often speak in hushed tones, fearful and wary of the person on the other end of the line. They are quickly reassured. The operators who work for WeTip are accustomed to dealing in dark secrets, expert in the exchange of private confidences.

For 25 years, anonymous callers with information on criminal activity have reported them to WeTip. People who have wanted to get something off their chest--a neighbor abusing a child, someone dealing drugs on a neighborhood corner, a con artist scamming the elderly out of their pension checks--it doesn’t matter.

“We take reports on school trash-can fires,” said the agency’s spokeswoman, Sue Aguilar.

“We want to know about those little juvenile arsonists,” she said, quite seriously.

WeTip forwards the information to law enforcement without reference to the caller’s identity.

“We will terminate a call if someone gives their name,” Aguilar said. “We don’t want to know it, [so] the police can’t subpoena the caller. Nothing can happen to a caller if they don’t tell anyone who they are.”

Bill Brownell, a retired sheriff’s deputy, created WeTip in 1972 to help combat the rising drug problem in Southern California. WeTip stands for We Turn In Pushers. He started the program in the hope of “returning the streets back to the 1950s, when people weren’t hitting the deck every time they heard a [noise like a] gunshot,” he said.

Aguilar said that the nonprofit organization, which started out locally but now receives 1,000 calls a month from all over the country at its office in the Los Angeles area, has helped law enforcement agencies make more than 12,000 arrests leading to 6,000 convictions. She said that out of every 10 calls, one leads to a conviction.

How does someone report a crime? He or she dials one of WeTip’s numbers, such as (800) 78-Crime or 87-FRAUD or 47-ARSON, and an operator will ask about 60 questions.

First they ask about the nature of the crime, where the supposed criminal lives, if they’re armed, where they work, the car they drive, if they live with anybody.

“We try to give police as much information as we can,” Aguilar said. “We don’t want them to run into any surprises when they investigate.”

The last question the operator asks is if the caller would be interested in collecting any reward should one be offered. If the caller does, the operator will give the person a code name and number. It’s never anything dramatic like Bond or 007, Aguilar said, just some colorless name so the caller can be identified when the time comes to send the reward check to a bank or post office box or wherever the caller wants it sent.

WeTip supports itself and gets most of its reward money through donations.

Many times a corporation will put up a large sum for the conviction of a criminal who committed a crime against the company. WeTip pays rewards only upon conviction.

One caller received $25,000 for turning in the gunman who wounded local newscaster Jerry Dunphy in a 1983 robbery attempt, Aguilar said. The attacker was sentenced to 14 years in jail.

Another caller turned in a man who was wanted by the FBI for robbing 56 banks in three states. The robber, dubbed “The Shootist” by law enforcement for his habit of shooting into the ceilings of the banks he was robbing, received a 98-year prison sentence, while the tipster walked away with $40,000, Aguilar said.