When it comes to solving crimes, everyone trusts that the local law enforcement agencies will take care of it. After all, that is their job. They find the clues to track down the criminals and keep everyone safe. They do this on a daily basis. In fact, they do their jobs so well that many people often forget that sometimes police officers need help.
Even with all of the tools and training at their disposal, sometimes police officers miss something. This is usually due to the fact that they simply weren’t there to witness it. This is when they turn to the general public for help.
Unfortunately, there are a lot of people out there who are uncomfortable with the idea of giving information to police officers. There are a number of reasons why people might not want to give tips or information to an officer, and most of them are things that don’t need to be worried about. Despite what some people may think, law enforcement officers can be trusted. After all, their job is to help people.
Why People Don’t Report Crimes
There are all kinds of reasons why a person may not want to report a crime or give tips to a police officer.
Some of the reasons include:
- They assume someone else will help. They figure that with so many people out there, that someone else will help and that they will not need to. The problem is, a lot of people think like this which can lead to nobody giving the information to local law enforcement.
- They don’t want to get involved. Some people would rather stay out of things and avoid any unnecessary struggles.
- They don’t want to make themselves look guilty. Some people incorrectly assume that by reporting a crime to the police they may make themselves look guilty. However, this is not the case.
- They don’t want to make a loved one look guilty. Sometimes a person may suspect that someone they care about committed a crime, and they try to help that loved one out by not reporting the crime.
- They are afraid that the accused criminal may come after them. This is something that is shown a lot on television and in movies. The accused goes after whoever “wronged” them by reporting the crime to the authorities. This rarely happens in real life and the police will do everything they can to help protect people from criminals.
- They don’t trust the police. Some people just have a mistrust of the police created by any number of things that have happened in the past. The important thing to remember is that for every story of a bad police officer, there are thousands upon thousands of untold stories of good officers following and enforcing the law every single day.
Why People Should Report Crime
The truth is, when it comes to crimes, sometimes police officers can’t always be there to get every detail. This is especially true the moment a crime happen. Unless officers knew the crime was going to occur, which is rare, the chances of them being there to see everything is slim to none.
In these instances, they need the public’s help to collect information about the crime in question, so that they can track down the culprit. They want to hear from people who witnessed the crime and might be able to offer a new perspective that could lead to an arrest. They need everyone’s help.
How To Report Crimes
If a person wants to report a crime or provide a tip, they can usually contact their local law enforcement agency over the phone or online. Some agencies can even accept tips through text messages. While this makes reporting tips and crimes easy, they do often require a person to provide their name contact information to the officers.
If a person wishes to report a tip anonymously, they can do so through Crime Stoppers. Crime Stoppers is an organization that works with law enforcement agencies all over the United States. What many people love about this organization is that it allows people to give tips about crimes anonymously, thus removing many of the concerns that people have about giving tips.
Crime Stoppers makes giving tips anonymously very easy by allowing people to give tips to local law enforcement agencies in the following ways:
- Online at the Crime Stoppers’ website.
- Over the phone with a toll free phone number on their website.
- With the P3 Tips mobile app.
This makes reporting tips about crimes easy.
Give The Police A Helping Hand
While Police officers have a lot of tools at their disposal, and years of training, they cannot always solve cases alone. Sometimes they need the public’s help. Unlike what some TV shows and movies would have people believe, reporting a crime or tip is not a big, scary deal. Often times it is as simple as giving some just a little bit of information.
If a person is still hesitant, then they can always give tips anonymously through Crime Stoppers. This way the person can still help out without the fear that someone may be looking for them.