When this area’s Crime Stoppers program set up shop in 1992, it was a low-tech affair with an old rotary dial phone.
Today, as South Okanagan Similkameen Crime Stoppers prepares to celebrate its 20th anniversary, it has gone high tech, allowing tipsters to provide information about crimes through encrypted websites, email and text messaging. A downloadable smart phone app is next.
“We have to keep up with the technology,” says Al Sismey, regional Crime Stoppers co-ordinator and the group’s founding chair. “Our sources of information come from all demographics in the community – not just old crocks like me. There are young people that want to do their part to keep their communities safe and so you need to make sure that you can accept information through the vehicle they choose to use.”
Although the technology has changed over two decades, the principle of Crime Stoppers is the same. It is operated by citizens who are outside of the police and it relies on people to provide anonymous tips on unsolved crimes.

Tipsters may receive cash rewards if the information they provide leads to a conviction in court.
Anonymity is crucial to the process, Sismey explains, adding the Crime Stoppers phone line does not use call display and emails and text messages pass through two levels of encryption that remove details that could identify the tipster.
Since its inception in 1992, the local Crime Stoppers organization has received more than 6,000 tips.
“I can tell you that probably 99 per cent of these calls would not have been made if there was not an anonymous process,” Sismey says.
Tipsters are assigned a number which facilitates follow-up contact.
Newer technology such as email and text messaging has made it more likely that there will be further anonymous contact with the tipster as Crime Stoppers seeks to clarify details of the tip.
“With phone, we had one chance to talk to a tipster,” says Sismey. “That’s when they called us. If they chose not to call back, we were SOL … that’s the beauty today of text messaging and web tips, because I can correspond with those tipsters anonymously without knowing their email address, without knowing their phone number. I don’t know any of that.”
South Okanagan Similkameen Crime Stoppers will be celebrating its 20th anniversary January 17 in Penticton. January actually marks the 21st anniversary of the group’s formation.
“We’re a year late,” Sismey chuckles. “I guess it [20th] sounds better than the 21st.”
Although the group is based in Penticton, where Sismey lives, it has representatives from communities throughout the South Okanagan and SimilkameenValley.
It serves a range of communities from Osoyoos in the south to Summerland in the north, to Manning Park in the west and to places such as Carmi and Bridesville in the east.
Sismey, who served 13 years with the RCMP, leaving the force in 1980, is the only paid employee. The rest of the organization is made up of volunteers.
They contract out the service of answering calls so that any tips can be handled live, around the clock, every day of the year.
They receive no government funding and no funds from police budgets, but rely entirely on donations from individuals and businesses. They are a registered charity.
“It’s a program for all of our communities, says Sismey. “Not just Penticton. The community support, the media support, is so important in order to make the program successful.”
The program operates independently of the police, but the police follow up on the leads that Crime Stoppers tipsters provide.
“It’s a great program,” says Sgt. Kevin Schur, Osoyoos Area Commander with the RCMP. “It’s an outlet for people to have their anonymity and still report to police.”
Police rely on information to do their work, he says, and so the information is helpful even though they can’t follow up with the informants.
“To me it’s more important that we get that information,” says Schur. “We still have to do leg work and confirm and corroborate that information.”
He encourages people to use Crime Stoppers and underlines that their anonymity is well protected by the system.
So how successful has Crime Stoppers been in its nearly 21 years in the region?
Sismey says that of more than 6,000 tips received, they have resulted in nearly 800 arrests and nearly 900 cases cleared.
Since statistics have been kept, the program has led to the seizure of 47 illegal weapons. The value of stolen property recovered and drugs seized, Sismey says, exceeds $15 million.
Drugs are the leading subject of tips, especially in the Osoyoos area, Sismey says, with smuggling and marijuana growing operations accounting for a number of tips.
Often, Sismey explains, drugs flow from Osoyoos to the Midway area where smugglers attempt to cross the border in some of the barren countryside. Information received by Crime Stoppers here may actually lead to arrests near Midway, which is in another Crime Stoppers region.
“Primarily our information is drug related,” says Sismey. “That’s not a bad thing because the root cause of most crime is drug related.”
Drug operations can attract other crime to a neighbourhood, Sismey explains, as rival drug groups try to eliminate competition.
“These guys don’t care if they kick a door down and it’s the wrong door,” he says. “It’s something that affects everybody in the community.”
What motivates tipsters to call Crime Stoppers?  For a few it may be the cash rewards, which are allocated by a committee based on the value of the information and the risk to the tipster.
Total rewards range from $2,000 to $6,000 per year.
For others, the tipster may be a criminal trying to eliminate his competition.
Most people, however, contact Crime Stoppers “because it’s the right thing to do,” Sismey says. He urges people not to hold back on providing a tip because they may think the information is unimportant. It’s the job of police to analyze the information and tipsters shouldn’t worry that their information is unimportant if it doesn’t in itself solve a crime.
“An investigation is like a puzzle,” Sismey says. “They may hold that little piece that’s missing … If it bothers you in your stomach, it’s probably something you want to phone in.”