From small beginnings, Crime Line develops into lifeline for Lubbock police - LubbockOnline.com

Thomas Ponce had been wanted by Lubbock police and sheriff’s officials in June in connection with two separate sexual assaults.

Two days after releasing his wanted poster, police officers arrested Ponce on June 16 at the near the 2600 block of First Street after a brief foot chase.

The 27-year-old’s arrest resulted from two separate Crime Line tips from callers who spotted him around First Street and University Avenue. The $6,000 reward money offered for information that led to Ponce’s arrest was split between the two callers, police officials said.

Ponce remains held at the Lubbock County Detention Center on a first-degree felony count of sexual assault. His bond is set at $500,000. His case is set to be presented to a Lubbock County grand jury.

One of the Lubbock Police Department’s most valuable crime solving tools is a telephone manned by two civilian employees during the weekdays.

The employees hold the title of public service officer and have multiple jobs for the person crimes unit. Answering the Crime Line phone is just one of their duties, said Lubbock police spokeswoman Tiffany Pelt.

The phone, assigned the number (806) 741-1000, picks up calls from anonymous tipsters, whose information has helped detectives who have run into dead ends on their cases.

“There’s no monetary value you can put on Crime Line and what it provides for our agency, “ said Lt. John Hayes with the department’s person crimes division, which investigates robberies, assaults and homicides. “There’s a finite number of officers here, so we can’t be all over the place. We can’t see everything and there’s some information that we just quite honestly, without Crime Line, would never ever have. So it is invaluable. It’s a fantastic tool for us.”

Crime Line offers callers complete anonymity. Tipsters are issued a unique tag number, which is tied to any reward resulting from the tip.

“Once the case reaches the appropriate point, whether that’s prosecution or the final adjudication of a case, or whatever level the case gets to that we determine that information was what ultimately broke the case one way or another, we’ll get with the folks with crime line and contact them and let them know that this person provided the tip that was the most beneficial or that led us to the person we were looking for,” Hayes said.

In the last five years, tips from Crime Line callers have increased. In 2012, 632 tips were called in. From January to July of this year, police have received more than 700 tips from Crime Line callers.

In 2015, Crime Line, which is funded through donations, paid out 15 rewards totaling nearly $29,000. This year, 10 rewards have been paid out from January to July totaling $9,300.

About 45-50 people call in tips monthly, Hayes said. The tips typically help with persons crimes cases.

“I feel like most of our tips are generated on persons crimes cases just based on the fact that those are the ones we publicize more than property crimes,” he said.

However, he believes more people would call in if they knew that the crimes don’t have to be publicized for tipsters to earn a reward.

“I think some folks think that Crime Line only exists when we put information out in the media to say there’s a Crime Line reward for this case,” Hayes said. “Crime Line functions on all cases. If you know where somebody is with a warrant, you can call Crime Line and if that person’s apprehended, there’s a possibility of a financial reward there. So it doesn’t have to just be something that’s publicized.”

There’s also no age limit for the tipsters. In fact, Sexton said he’s been working to get LISD officials to encourage students to call into Crime Line if they know about a crime.

“”If they call in and say, ‘I know something about who you’re looking for ,’or ‘I know something about that robbery,’ that would get them in to get a code, he said. “It could be a 14 year old that identified the car and got a license plate number.”

While Crime Line tips can be sent through text, phone calls seem to be the main mode tipsters use, said Hayes. To send in a text by text, tipsters must include the keyword “LBKTIPS” at the beginning of their message to 274637.

“I’m actually kind of surprised that we don’t get more text tips the way society is with their phones,” he said. “Texting provides you even another level of removal.”

Crime Line began in 1979 with a $3,500 donation offered by a Lubbock family to help catch a suspected killer, said Jim Sexton, the Crime Line president. The seed money went fast and the organization’s board members met weekly to come up with fundraising ideas to keep the rewards coming to help law enforcement.

The board found relief when two separate Lubbock residents left Crime Line in their wills. Then a decade-long lull in Crime Line tips helped build a cash surplus.

At present, the organization receives a yearly donation from the Kuykendall foundation, which has given annually between $5,000 to $6,000 to the organization for the last 12 years. The J.T. and Margaret Talkington Charitable Foundation’s $50,000 donation three years ago has also helped keep the rewards flowing, Sexton said.

“The Crime Line position, financially, is excellent,” Sexton said. “We’re anxious to pay out rewards.”

Aside from the regular donors, organizations and families of victims have also bolstered rewards for specific crimes.

In the Ponce case, investigators believe he sexually assaulted a woman in her apartment at the Village at Overton apartments. Sexton said the apartments’ owners, American Campus Communities, added $5,000 to the $1,000 Crime Line reward. American Campus Communities did not respond to requests for comment.

Texas Tech officials put in $9,000 toward a $1,000 reward for the Ma 29, 2000 murder of student Stefanie Hill, whose body was found in a burning apartment at 701 Ithaca Street. She was found dead about 1 a.m., less than an hour after she left Outback Steakhouse where she worked as a waitress. A person about 6 feet tall wearing a baseball cap, dark shirt and brown shorts or pants was seen leaving her apartment shortly before the fire.

Investigators believe the fire was started to cover up her killing.

Pelt said detectives are actively working the case and are chasing new leads.

Anyone with information on the case can call Crime Line at (806) 741-1000.

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