The crime-fighting Crime Stoppers tip service is coming to St. Landry Parish public schools.
Superintendent Patrick Jenkins expects Crime Stoppers Safe School will be implemented within the first nine weeks of schools.
“I think it is going to be a very important ... it gives our community, our children, an opportunity to report things that are going on in the schools. We want our schools to be as safe as we can possibly have them,” he said.
Eddie Thibodeaux, St. Landry Crime Stoppers coordinator and deputy chief for the St. Landry Parish Sheriff’s Office, presented the school Crime Stoppers program at a School Board Buildings, Lands and Sites Committee meeting Monday in Opelousas.
The committee recommended the School Board adopt the program.
A Crime Stoppers program in schools has existed in New Orleans schools since 2004, Thibodeaux said. St. Landry Parish will be the second parish to adopt the school program.
“Each place is different, but inside the schools we have our kids that have the same problems, bullying, theft, guns, drugs. So, I want to offer something that is not going to cost money,” Thibodeaux said.
The St. Landry Crime Stoppers will pay the estimated annual $5,000 to run the school program. Eventually, the state may pick up the cost because Gov. John Bel Edwards is targeting school safety, he said.
A school-based Crime Stoppers has been in operation in Texas since the 1990s, he said. That program has resulted in the seizure of $5 million in drugs, $72,000 in stolen property and 6,000 weapons, he said.
“We can be out there in front. We are now endorsed by the governor and Board of Education,” Thibodeaux said.
The Crime Stoppers tip application will be available on school computers and as the P3 download for mobile devices, he said.
Called the P3 Campus, the system allows students, teachers and other schools employees to report tips anonymously.
The highest number of tips in the New Orleans area came in around 9 p.m., he said. That’s why the mobile P3 app is part of the system.
Thibodeaux said the Crime Stoppers system is simple.
“They will never be asked for a name,” he said of tipsters, who are given a number.
If a tip is successful the tipster gets the reward by going to drive-up window at bank and giving the teller a number. The payout is verified by Crime Stoppers, he said.
St. Landry Crime Stoppers paid about $4,000 last month to tipsters, he said.
Crime Stoppers is a non-profit and works independent of police and sheriff’s, he said.
“This is the beauty of it. When you get arrested and you have to pay fines, we get like a dollar of the fine. So, the criminals actually pay for it themselves,” he said of Crime Stoppers funding.
“It is a win, win for everyone,” he said.
Thibodeaux said the school Crime Stoppers program is expected to be in operation in every school district in the state at some point and will be called the “Safe School Hotline.”
Thibodeaux wants to roll the program with the assistance of school student council members acting as ambassadors.
Thibodeaux advised the school officials on hand Monday to adopt an open policy about what is happening at schools.
“As soon as there a lockdown at a school Facebook blows up and everybody knows,” he said.
“Be out front,” he said.
The tip line also provides an opportunity to open a dialogue with the tipster, he said.
School Board member Myron Guillory, a former deputy sheriff, said the program will add another layer of safety to the campuses.
“We need all the eyes and ears we can with all the stuff that is happening,” he said.
