Membership with, donations for York County Crime Stoppers encouraged

YORK – This past week, William Hoefener, current president of the York County Crime Stoppers, spoke with the York County Commissioners, to explain what the organization does and to encourage more community participation. He said he’s been trying to do more community outreach, in order to expand the public’s knowledge about what they do and the need for more donations as well as membership.

​“Be part of the solution, you can help,” is a slogan the local organization uses to encourage participation.
“Our income comes from donations from the community and we need people to please donate. All donations are tax deductible and can be mailed to York County Crime Stoppers, PO Box 184, York, Ne 68467. We have maintained a 100% conviction rate and recovered over $115,000 in property loss,” Hoefener said.
Hoefener said the group meets every other month, for approximately one hour at each meeting, and they want more members. If someone wants to join the group, they can call Hoefener at 402-363-1604.
He explained the process in that Crime Stoppers offers rewards to those who have information leading to the arrest of the people or persons involved in a crime. He said local law enforcement officers tell them about the crimes, they suggest a reward amount and then Crime Stoppers puts out the information.
“Crime Stoppers does not take the calls, law enforcement does,” Hoefener said. “Then the calls come in, to 402-362-2999, the callers are assigned a case number. Later, when people are convicted for those crimes, law enforcement agencies come back to us and tell us how much should be rewarded based on the information the informants provide. The informants can call in to see if any action was taken based on what information they gave us and they are informed as to whether or not they qualify for a reward. We use a bank in Aurora – we deposit the money there and the person with the case number can go over to the out-of-town bank, get the cash and walk out, so we can keep this anonymous.”
He noted many informants turn down the reward, saying they don’t want the money.
The reward money is all from donations, he reiterated.
And no one on the Crime Stoppers committee is paid. “We are all volunteers. We need active members. We have 26 right now, but only about 10 people come to the meetings. The more people we have on the committee, the more this information goes out.”