What is Crime Stoppers

This book provides an explanation of Crime Stoppers and tells how programs operate around the world. Created in 1976 by Greg MacAleese, an Albuquerque, New Mexico detective, to solve the slaying of a 19-year-old college student, the concept has grown to a global network of independent Crime Stoppers programs dedicated to improving security in communities and keeping streets safe. These volunteer grass root organizations maintain telephone tiplines where callers can anonymously report information that will help police solve crime. Rewards, raised through donations from the public, are available if a tip leads to an arrest. The book also outlines the value of School Crime Stoppers programs and reveals what world leaders and top law enforcement officials have said about the crime solving network. In addition to highlighting crimes that have been cleared through tips to Crime Stoppers, the book incorporates several cases that police agencies around the world are anxious to solve. Among them the strangulation slaying of 16-year-old Chanel Petro-Nixon who vanished from her family’s Brooklyn, New York apartment on Father’s Day in 2006; the June 2011 mysterious disappearance of 19-year-old Shizelle Hernandez while on basic training with the Air Guard in Trinidad; the abduction and murder of 14-year-old Aielah Saric-Auger in Prince George, British Columbia, one of several hundred aboriginal females who have gone missing in Canada through the years and the 13 victims of what police in South Australia call the Child Murder Cases occurring between 1966 and 2000. Also highlighted is the effort by Crime Stoppers to track down poachers in South Africa and prevent the slaughter of rhinos, one of the world’s most endangered species.