Crimestoppers UK

Crimestoppers Trust is an independent crime-fighting charitable organization in the United Kingdom. Crimestoppers operates the 0800 555 111 telephone number, allowing people to call anonymously to pass on information about crime. People can also give information anonymously via an Anonymous Online Form on the Crimestoppers website. Callers are not required to give their name or any personal information. Crimestoppers now has more than 100 staff and almost 700 volunteers and has an income of more than £4.5m a year.

In November 2005 Crimestoppers launched the Most Wanted section of its website where members of the public can look at images of people currently wanted by UK law enforcement agencies.

Most Wanted is the only UK-wide online forum where individuals wanted by the police and other law enforcement bodies such as the National Crime Agency, HMRC and the UK Border Force can be found and information passed on about them anonymously by the public.

As part of Most Wanted, the Unknowns Gallery was launched in February 2014. This allows law enforcement users to upload images of individuals that they require names for (often taken from e-fits or CCTV stills). With the gallery searchable by both crime type and location, this makes it easier for the public to put names to these faces without having to reveal their own identity.

Crimestoppers runs a large number of campaigns each year educating the public about different crime types and appealing for information. Examples of campaigns include:

Starting in 2013, the charity and police forces across the country distributed "scratch and sniff" cards to the public to educate and inform them about the signs to spot and the specific smell of cannabis when it is growing. The campaign was designed to target cultivation by criminal gangs so hot spot areas, as informed by police intelligence, were targeted by 17 police forces throughout England and Wales. Due to the campaign, information passed to Crimestoppers on cannabis cultivation contributed to new cannabis farms being discovered and a number of arrests.

Crime figures show a substantial rise in reported fraud, boosted by a rise in identity theft and online scams costing the UK economy £63m per year. To help tackle these crimes, the charity has created a Game of Fraud website, featuring a survey with information on a variety of frauds, including romance fraud, courier fraud and online shopping fraud. Through a series of short questions, the quiz identifies which fraud types members of the public may be most vulnerable to and gives a detailed description of how they may be targeted.

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Wikipedia