Supporting better communities and solving crimes thanks to Crime Stoppers SA and Police Credit Union partnership

Posted on 05/07/2018

The first anniversary milestone of a major partnership forged between Crime Stoppers SA and Police Credit Union has resulted in a number of highly-effective community safety campaigns delivered right across South Australia during the last 12 months.

Crime Stoppers South Australia Chair, Ms Sharon Hanlon, said the partnership with Police Credit Union had assisted the not-for-profit to engage the community, encourage people to anonymously share information about criminals and their activities, and deliver a range of crime prevention campaigns.

“During the 2017 calendar year Crime Stoppers SA received nearly 19,500 calls from people wanting to share information, resulting in a total of 911 apprehensions made by police. The support from Police Credit Union as a major program partner, as well as Channel 9 as our media partner directly contribute to that outstanding result – and the community are ultimately the biggest winners from having a safer community,” Ms Hanlon said.

“In partnership with Police Credit Union we developed and delivered a home safety campaign aligned with the October long weekend and Easter break to remind people to take some basic security precautions before going away. In advance of a potentially deadly summer we partnered on a bushfire arson awareness campaign that harnessed the power of social media and traditional methods to spread the word about the suspicious activity of firebugs,” she said.

“We joined forces and used Valentine’s Day as a quirky opportunity to help people avoid a broken heart by dating scammers, kept people safe over the Christmas period by sharing ways to look after themselves, and more recently we delivered a statewide initiative to help safeguard South Australians from online scammers as part of National Scams Awareness Week.

Police Credit Union CEO, Mr Costa Anastasiou, said that by supporting the Crime Stoppers SA program the organisation was actively supporting better communities.

“As a customer-owned organisation we are immensely proud to be able to re-invest profits back into enhancing our services and giving back to the local community through a number of very worthwhile activities, and the work of Crime Stoppers is about as important as it gets because crime impacts the entire community and levels of public confidence,” Mr Anastasiou said.

“With an average of 25 crimes solved each and every week as a direct result of information provided to Crime Stoppers we know that it delivers outstanding results, and we look forward to supporting the program and partnering to deliver even more community safety and crime prevention programs in the years ahead,” he said.

If you have any information about criminals or criminal activity, then call Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000, report online at crimestopperssa.com.au or download the free Report Suspicious Behaviour App for iOS and Android phones.

People can remain anonymous and rewards are available.

The 2017 program results for Crime Stoppers SA included:

• 19,439 calls from people wanting to share information about criminals and their illegal activities;
• 4,222 online and other reports lodged using the Report Suspicious Behaviour app or visiting www.crimestopperssa.com.au
• 911 apprehensions including wanted fugitives, arsonists, and suspects wanted for robberies, theft and assault;
• 1,901 charges laid for drug dealing, firearms, robbery, serious assaults and child pornography offences;
• 79 firearms seized – including ammunition and a range of illegal accessories.
• 1266 plants and 241kg of cannabis (which equates to 86,229 street deals); and
• Shut down of 12 clandestine labs.

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