Lifetime Citizen Portal Access — AI Briefings, Alerts & Unlimited Follows
Police present Crime Stoppers tipline for Lynchburg schools; committee advances proposal to full board
Loading...
Summary
The committee heard a Crime Stoppers presentation proposing an anonymous tipline/app for Lynchburg City Schools at no cost to the district. Police emphasized call/app anonymity and vetting of tips; the committee voted to advance the proposal to the full board for consideration and asked staff to work out phone-use and Chromebook-access logistics.
Sergeant Barbara Gibson of the Lynchburg Police Department presented a proposal to introduce Crime Stoppers anonymous reporting (call line, text, and mobile app) to Lynchburg City Schools during the finance and facilities committee meeting on Nov. 7.
Gibson said Crime Stoppers is a nonprofit regional program that has operated locally since 2000. She told the committee the program would provide a phone number, texting and an app that would allow anonymous tips at no cost to the district and that tip information not criminal in nature (for example, some bullying reports) would be forwarded to appropriate school staff.
"No personal information is gathered," Sergeant Barbara Gibson said, explaining that tips are taken through a third-party call center and the program does not capture IP addresses or identifying data. She described a bank-based payout method for tip rewards that avoids in-person handoffs.
Board members asked how the district would protect students who provide tips, whether false reports ("swatting") would be a problem and how tip reporting would interact with the district's student cell-phone policies. Gibson said tips are vetted by police intelligence units and that the program provides corroborating documentation that can be used by investigators.
Committee members and staff discussed options to encourage anonymous reporting without encouraging students to use phones during class, including placing a direct link or icon on district-issued Chromebooks so students could make anonymous reports without pulling personal phones. Staff said further logistics on Chromebook links, signage and how phone-use policies would be reconciled should be worked out with Crime Stoppers and the district IT staff before full-board consideration.
A committee member made a motion to advance the Crime Stoppers proposal to the full school board for consideration; the motion was seconded and carried.
