Cass County Sheriff’s Department offers more ways to submit crime tips
Published 2:53 pm Friday, November 26, 2010
Do you have information about a crime and want to remain anonymous?
For the first time, mobile phone users in Cass County now have the ability to provide anonymous crime-fighting tips through the power of anonymous text messaging and WebTips. The sheriff’s office is pleased to announce that it provides this service, which allows citizens to send anonymous tips by sending a text message from a mobile phone or online.
Information may be anonymously received and securely replied to with complete confidence. The service was built specifically to allow text messaging informants to remain anonymous by encrypting the text messages and routing them through several secure servers, protecting the personal details of the informant.
The program also allows law enforcement to respond by text message to the originating cell phone without ever knowing the identity of the individual who left the tip. The user’s information is always given an alias and a unique ID before being sent. This secure application allows the tipster and the investigator to have two-way dialog while always keeping the user’s identity completely anonymous.
How it works
• Using a cell phone: To submit a crime tip from a cell phone, send a text message to 274637 (CRIMES on your phone keypad) — with the keyword CASS as the first word in the message body.
For example, A tipster would send the following message to 274637 (CRIMES on your phone keypad):”CASS John Doe broke into the house on Main Street.”
• On the Web: To submit a crime tip to the sheriff’s office using the Web, go to ccso.info and click on the link to submit a tip. Tipsters using this site will get a username and password that keeps their identity anonymous, allowing them to log in at a later date and anonymously answer deputies’ follow-up questions.
Sheriff Joseph Underwood encourages everyone to report information about any illegal activity, such as unsolved cases, vandalism, theft, the sale and distribution of drugs or information about crimes that are being planned in the community or schools.
