A break-in, a trip to the bank, a tip
to 528-CASH, and 3 felony charges
It began some time around the night of Oct. 30, 2015. One or more burglars break into in an office building on Union Avenue in Midtown. Blank checks are found and removed from the premises.
Fast forward to October 31, Halloween. A woman enters a SunTrust Bank on Frayser Boulevard and cashes some checks. Later the checks prove to be stolen and to have come from the burglary.
Fortunately, images are caught of the woman at the bank and publicized.
Days later, an anonymous citizen calls CrimeStoppers on the 528-CASH (2274) tips line. The caller provides an identity of the woman in the bank photos.
Finally, police investigators positively identity, locate and arrest Antronette Armstrong and charge her with identity theft, forgery and theft of property above $500. She goes to jail.
Those are the typical steps that occur when a crime is coupled with a successful citizen's tip to CrimeStoppers.
The tip was one of 29 about felonies taken at the Real Time Crime Center during December. Twenty of those ended in arrests and were approved for payments. Nineteen people showed up at a designated site to collect a total of $6,500 in awards.
The December tips helped finish an extraordinary year for CrimeStoppers, with increases in all significant measurements, numbers of tips, arrests and cases solved.
"The statistics reveal how important CrimeStoppers is to fighting crime in ths community," said E. Winslow (Buddy) Chapman, executive director and a founder of the organization.
"With most crimes, some good citizen knows something that can help police. This has been proven many times. This is why CrimeStoppers works."
CrimeStoppers 2015 edition
by the numbers
A citizen tip about crimes and criminals has always proven to be an important law enforcement tool.
The 2015 numbers prove how important:
* Tip volume last year was up 21.15 percent over the year before.
* The number of resulting felony arrests grew by 35.81 percent.
* The number of tips that proved successful (ending in solution to cases) showed a 40.44 percent increase over 2014.