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Crime Solvers is a nonprofit organization and is funded primarily through tax deductible donations from businesses, civic organizations, and citizens. The donations are used for rewards and 95-97% of the money is paid out in rewards to callers. Crime Solvers pays no salaries. All media time on tv, radio, as well as newspapers and billboard advertising is provided at no cost to Crime Solvers. |
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Petersburg was the third in our area to begin a program, after Richmond and Chesterfield. The whole Crime Solvers concept began in Albuquerque, New Mexico. In 1978 after a murder/robbery case, Detective Greg Macaleese had few leads and was talking to a friend in the TV business. This friend suggested doing a re-enactment of the crime to show people what had happened and to "jog" their memory. It just happened that an individual was cut off by the suspects fleeing the scene at a high rate of speed and remembered the personalized license plate number. After the case profiled on TV, this person called the police and gave the tag number. Investigation and evidence revealed that this vehicle was driven by the suspects, and they were arrested, tried, and convicted. |
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| The basic premise of Crime Solvers is that, in the vast majority of cases, someone other than the suspect(s) has some information about the crime. No matter how seemingly insignificant, it can often be the final "piece of the puzzle" needed to solve the case! |
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Crime Solvers, Crime Stoppers, Silent Witness and Crime Line, are all basically the same regarding their concept. The different names are used to differentiate different programs in large metropolitan areas, but the bottom line is that there are over 60 programs in the State of Virginia, and there are more than 1000 programs all over the world. (Crime Stoppers International is the umbrella group under which all programs operate.) A lot of the programs cover more than one jurisdiction; i.e., Petersburg joined with Dinwiddie, Colonial Heights with Chesterfield, and the Richmond Metro Group has about five different jurisdictions under their Crime Stopper program. Petersburg Crime Solvers started in February 1985, with Dinwiddie coming on board in 1986. |
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The program continues to work well by assigning an I.D. Number to the caller who never has to give their name, phone number or testify in court. If the caller's tip is helpful to law enforcement, he or she can receive up to $1,000 in a cash reward. The Crime Solvers number is 861-1212. | |||||||||||
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| You can also view the crime statistics for Petersburg at the official police department website. | ||||||||||||