By Jenny Neyman
Photo by Jenny Neyman, Redoubt Reporter. Kathy Musick, of Jersey Subs, and Ed Beddow, of Peninsula Crime Stoppers, display a Crime Stoppers sign Musick will hang in the sub shops to promote awareness for the crime-reporting organization.
Redoubt Reporter
A metal padlock wasn’t enough to prevent a crime at Jersey Subs in Soldotna last week. Owner Kathy Musick is hoping a metal sign displaying a phone number is.
Someone took a crowbar to a locked freezer outside the back door of the Soldotna sandwich shop last week and stole about $800 worth of meat. About four years ago someone broke in and stole the shop’s cash register. There have been no arrests in either case.
“What’s so frustrating is (police) know who does it but they can’t prove it. So what do we, as business owners and citizens, have to do?” said Musick, who co-owns and operates Jersey Subs locations in Kenai, Soldotna and Kasilof.
Pitch in, she decided.
Musick lives in Kasilof, where she is active in a neighborhood watch program. She takes the program seriously, keeping an eye on her neighbors and their property. Starting this week she’s applying that model at her business locations, as well, by hanging up signs for Peninsula Crime Stoppers, which encourages people to take an active role in keeping their community safe.
In the 15 or 16 years she and Jimmy Fallon have operated Jersey Subs, Musick said she’s seen crime escalate on the central Kenai Peninsula, and she’s attempting to do something about it. The sub shops now have surveillance cameras, and when approached by Crime Stoppers to display a sign listing its 283-TIPS phone number, she bought three.
The signs are a fundraiser for the organization, to generate money for the cash rewards it pays for tips that result in arrests in felony crimes. The signs are also an effort to raise awareness of the organization in the community. At $100 for each sign, Musick figured $300 is still a small price to pay if it helps prevent further burglaries. Sure, the $800 in stolen meat could be reimbursed through insurance, but the deductible and possible rise in premiums makes it not even worth reporting, she said. And while new locks, cameras and other security measures may make her businesses more secure, they don’t do anything to help protect the rest of the community. Raising awareness does.
“Crime has seemed to escalate more and more, and I don’t think it’s the economy because actually Alaska has a low unemployment rate. I just think it’s people that are abusing the system,” she said.
If that’s the case, than other people need to have a system to fight back. That’s the idea behind Crime Stoppers. It’s a way to engage community members to keep an eye out for each other.
“It’s just good to have an avenue where someone can report something with anonymity in the community,” said Earlene Reed, treasurer of Peninsula Crime Stoppers. “I think if we are all part of a community, we all need to take care of ourselves and each other. That, to me, is a community obligation. You’re hurting yourself, you’re hurting your community if you continue to let criminal activity go on without letting anyone know.”
Crime Stoppers is a worldwide organization, responsible for 866,048 arrests, more than 1 million cases cleared, more than $2 billion in property recovered, more than $8 billion in drugs seized, more than $10 billion in total money recovered, and just shy of $1 billion in rewards paid to tipsters, as of May 23. The organization has been active on the Kenai Peninsula for 25 years, credited with 270 arrests, 265 cases cleared, $331,780 in property recovered, about $1.7 million in drugs seized, more than $2 million in money recovered and $17,650 in rewards paid, as of the end of February. Just since last June the local organization has received more than 50 tips and paid out about $1,800 in cash rewards.
Tips can be made anonymously, over the phone at 283-TIPS or 1-800-478-HALT, or through a website, www.peninsulacrimestoppers.org. Tips are routed to the law enforcement agency with jurisdiction in that area and investigated. Each person reporting a tip is identified only by a number and their identity is protected through the entire process, even picking up their reward.
Reward amounts are decided upon by the nonprofit organization’s board of directors, following a rubric that measures several factors, such as severity of the crime and importance of the information. Rewards start at $100 for something as simple as a tipster reporting that he or she overheard someone bragging in a bar of a theft or break-in. Tipsters can get up to $1,000 for information that helps solve a more serious crime.
The money is meant to be an incentive to battle the two main factors that inhibit crime reporting — fear and apathy. By promising anonymity, a tipster can report a crime without fear of being investigated or identified. Money may motivate some who otherwise wouldn’t care enough to make a report. Organizers hope that awareness of Crime Stoppers encourages community members to be more aware of suspicious behavior in general, whether they report something just in hope of a cash reward, or if contributing to public safety is enough of a payback.
“You don’t want to be a rat or a nark or something like that, but once it affects someone you know then it becomes a sense of duty. For me, it’s like, you’re going to have to live with the guilt if you don’t report something, even if it doesn’t seem like much at the time,” said Ed Beddow, Peninsula Crime Stoppers board president. “Something as simple as a burglary can escalate into something more serious, where someone can get hurt. Why sit there and do nothing when you see something you think may look strange? As a community, we need to network. We need to have awareness.
“My mission statement is, for a community as a whole, law enforcement is one-third of it. Police and the troopers, they can’t do it alone. And they’re always called after the fact. For me, it’s about crime prevention through crime awareness.”
Beddow and his wife own several businesses on the central Kenai Peninsula, and they take great care with security at their shops and home. He’s seen what can happen with laxity. Beddow’s parents’ homes have been broken into three times, and several people he knows in the community have had their businesses burglarized.
“In this community over the years I’ve seen crime has escalated, because of several factors. We get a lot of transient people who move through here. There’s gang activity that comes down from Anchorage. Drugs are coming through here, and that creates desperation. And times are hard for a lot of people,” Beddow said.
“When you are vandalized or burglarized, you feel a sense of vulnerability. You never feel the same. You can’t assume everything is safe and not pay attention. When you assume, you leave room for error. In my lifetime I’ve worked hard for everything I have, and I don’t want to assume.”
Peninsula Crime Stoppers has public-awareness signs available for sale for $100 each. The nonprofit organization also accepts tax-deductible donations and is looking for volunteers and board members. For more information, visit www.peninsulacrimestoppers.org, or contact Crime Stoppers law enforcement liaison Jeff Whannell, with the Kenai Police Department, at 283-7879 or jwhannell@ci.kenai.ak.us.
