POLICE GIVE TIPSTERS THUMBS UP TO TEXT

TAMPA - Police in the 1970s urged citizens to "drop a dime" in a pay
phone to report crimes anonymously. Now, in an increasing number of
cities, tipsters are being invited to use their thumbs - to identify
criminals using text messages.

Police hope the idea helps recruit teens and 20-somethings who
wouldn't normally dial a Crime Stoppers hot line to share information
with authorities.

"If somebody hears Johnny is going to bring a gun to school,
hopefully they'll text that in," said Sgt. Brian Bernardi of the
Louisville, Ky., Metro Police Department, which rolled out its
text-message tip line in June.

Departments in Boston and Cincinnati started accepting anonymous text
tips about a year ago. Since then, more than 100 communities have
taken similar steps or plan to do so. The Internet-based systems
route messages through a server that encrypts cell phone numbers
before they get to police, making tips virtually impossible to track.

In Louisville, Bernardi's computer displayed a text message from a
person identified only as "Tip563." It read: "someone has vandalized
the school van at valor school on bardstown rd in fern creek." The
note also reported illegal dumping in a trash container and in the woods.

"It's obvious that the future of communication is texting," said
officer Michael Charbonnier, commander of the Boston Police
Department's Crime Stoppers unit. "You look at these kids today and
that's all they're doing. You see five kids standing on the corner,
and they're texting instead of having a conversation with each other."

When Boston adopted the system last year, the first text tip yielded
an arrest in a New Hampshire slaying. In the 12 months that ended
June 15, Boston police logged 678 text tips, nearly matching the 727
phone tips during the same period.

Earlier this year, a text tip led to the arrest of a suspect in a drug case.

"We've gotten some great drug information, specific times, dates,
names of suspects, locations, pickup times, license plate numbers,"
Charbonnier said. In another instance, a hearing-impaired man who
could not call 911 used a text message to report a domestic violence incident.

Since the beginning of the year, cities such as Tampa, San Francisco,
Seattle, Denver, Indianapolis, New Orleans and Detroit have started
their own text-based tip systems, according to Texas-based Anderson
Software, a leading provider of the technology. Many cities are
adding the text messages to a system that already accepted anonymous
tips through a Web site.

Lisa Haber, a sheriff's detective who heads the Tampa-area Crime
Stoppers unit, recently spent an hour exchanging 21 text messages
with a tipster about a possible stolen car. It didn't yield an
arrest, but Haber said it allowed her to glimpse the potential of
being able to communicate in real time with texters. A marketing
blitz will help get the word out when students return to school later
this summer.

"It's got a lot of potential," said Cincinnati police Lt. David Fink,
whose agency has collected about five text tips a month since
adopting the system in May 2007. "Just like when we started Crime
Stoppers 27 years ago, it took some time for it to catch on."

Sarah Coss, 18, an incoming freshman at the University of Tampa,
typically logs about 6,000 text messages a month chatting to her
friends. She thinks people who use text messaging every day will be
more likely to report crimes that way, and the impersonal nature of
text messaging will give more people her age the confidence to share
information with authorities.