Florida Crime Stoppers **TIPS Campaign | Ashley Moody & John Walsh, 2023

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0:00 foreign thank you foreign ridiculous thank you here good morning and thank you so much for joining us today this is a a great morning in Florida as we announce a new campaign and initiative here in Florida to make us indeed a safer State as you can see I am joined by many that are committed to making us the best state in the nation and not only fighting crime but solving outstanding cases because we know that goes a long way into protecting our communities today I get to announce a new partnership with not only the Florida Crime Stoppers which has just been a remarkable successful Organization for

7:17 many decades in helping us keep Florida a historic crime lows but today we are announcing a partnership with a man who has dedicated his life's work to solving crime and catching criminals and really being a voice for victims and helping bring closure to victims throughout our state and the nation John Walsh has been the Relentless force behind America's Most Wanted and the national Center for missing and exploiting children because of tragic personal circumstances he has used that drive to pursue fearlessly criminals in all corners of our country and Beyond he is dedicated to this Mission and indeed has this same drive and focus and and passionate

8:14 Pursuit today that he had decades ago today we are announcing a new partnership and campaign with Mr Walsh and Florida Crime Stoppers to help encourage Floridians to play an active role in our crime fighting team and helping us solve crimes we for many of you you know that when I came on board as the Attorney General we had 27 different Anonymous crime reporting lines across the state of Florida and as I will explain later and give you a unique example many times those that commit crimes do not stay in the jurisdiction in which they commit crimes they flee to other jurisdictions they may reside in other jurisdictions and we

9:00 really need a way and a program to involve those in the communities that may have information about crime which might not be in the jurisdiction in which that crime was committed we need Floridians to feel a part of that process and continuously examine if they have information and feel comfortable reporting that to law enforcement so in 2020 we announced a one number consistent uniform Anonymous crime reporting line star star tips very easy to remember I had a young son at the time I said it to him once and he remembered it thereafter Floridians can remember star star tips and they can dial that from any cell phone anywhere

9:40 in the state and give information about crime that they have and it will go to the right jurisdiction that is investigating that crime Florida continues to lead in new initiatives being proactive in how we are addressing the problems and in fact Nationwide they took Florida's example and our program of a Uniform Crime reporting number and star starts tips is now available Nationwide we are so proud of that and now it's time that we really engage and recruit law-abiding citizens to become members of our crime fighting community and team to help us solve more recent crimes but even long outstanding unsolved crimes

10:28 unlike many areas of the state and nation of other states and cities we want to make sure that we have relationships with with our citizens and law enforcement so that folks feel comfortable being a part of this team and a part of this process so they can do it anonymously through star star tips if they are experiencing emergency or if they feel someone else's safety may be in danger imminently we need people to call 9-1-1 immediately and these are just some ways Florida will continue continuously stay ahead of crime Trends and make sure that what we see around the nation and some cities and states

11:08 never takes root here in the State of Florida I have to give a lot of credit to Florida Crime Stoppers just in the last 12 months alone they had more than 59 000 citizen tips that were reported to them that led to more than 2 700 arrests that may not have been made if we did not have those tips and they paid more than 987 thousand dollars for anonymous tips that led to arrests I give a lot of credit to our Florida Crime Stoppers many of them volunteers that are standing here today I also have to pay due respect with with such admiration that I have for the men

11:50 and women that chose to commit their professional lives to this incredibly important profession of law enforcement thank you for making that choice whether it was last week or whether it was decades ago all of you including Sheriff Bradshaw have just been incredible Partners as we fight crime and make our communities safer I want to just give you an example of a way that you can be a part of a multi-jurisdictional case that may help us solve crimes that we have not been able to um hold someone accountable for in 94 in September of 94 a young girl a five-year-old Amanda

12:32 Doherty went missing from her bed two days later she was found her body was found in Palm Beach so even though someone a crime may have occurred in another jurisdiction she went missing from Broward County the body was found in Palm Beach this happened back in 1994 September 24th of 1994 is when her body was discovered we asked the public to help us solve that crime and again I plead with the public anyone anywhere in the State of Florida if you have information related to that crime please call star star tips even if you think that the information you have might not be significant

13:20 please let us make that determination as some of the experienced investigators standing behind me today would tell you it is often the the fact or the tip that someone thinks might not lead to to a conclusion or might not make a difference is the fact or the tip that solves and breaks the case so if you have information about Amanda Doherty the five-year-old little girl that was adopted abducted in 1994 and her body was found here in Palm Beach County please call star star tips one of the ways that we make Florida stronger and safer state is engaging our

13:59 community members to be a part of this team as you can see keeping our children our families our community safe is so important and it drives all of the successes of this great state we led the nation last year and and net migration more than any other state people moved here we broke tourism records we lead the nation in new business formations last year that is not an accident that is because we are all committed to making sure that this is a strong stable safe state to raise a family to enjoy your life and to pursue the American dream so to all of you that are helping us do that thank you and with with great hope and optimism

14:47 that today we are recruiting recruiting many others to join this team by calling star star tip tips I thank you thank you for helping us make this a stronger and safer State and with that I will call up your Sheriff Rick Bradshaw morning folks it's great to be here with the attorney general she is a tough tenacious prosecutor but more than that every day she's thinking about ways to keep you safe and improve your quality of life we are very fortunate to have her and we need to make sure that she stays there uh the other person that's here today is John Walsh I've known John for probably

15:28 excess of 30 years he has chased and pursued more dangerous people out here than one can imagine he has been a great partner to law enforcement as far as tracking down and finding people that have tried to evade the law he is undoubtedly the finest of the nation as far as making sure that law enforcement is going to succeed in bringing these people to Justice he is truly a great American Crime Stoppers is important to us not just because of reporting information that may lead to solving a crime but in today's atmosphere when we have mass shootings we have workplace violence we have school shootings there's always a piece of information

16:22 that's out there that could have helped us prevent and I use that word prevent to think from happening how many times after these incidents somebody comes forward and say I knew that was going to happen well why did you call somebody because they're afraid that somebody's going to find out that they did it because it's either a loved one a school mate somebody they work with so Crime Stoppers is going to be more important than ever not just to solve cases but to help us prevent crime out here so people can report these things anonymously and give us a chance to stop

17:01 these things before they happen so now it's my pleasure to introduce my good friend and truly a great American John Walsh thank you all for being here today and uh we we've got some important business to do and and wish that you would help us spread the word about what we're doing here today first I'd like to thank the Attorney General she is the driving force between making Florida my model and the model for Crime Stoppers Nationwide with the phone number and the app um Rick Bradshaw you're right you and I've been buddies for 30 years done a

17:40 lot of your cases you I think is this A.G I want to announce today my hopes are that when Rick DeSantis gets through doing what he has to do that you run for governor that's my my personal good job that you've done Rick you're the sheriff for life without a doubt as long as you want to run you're going to be the sheriff for life and look at what you've done over the years in this County in this county is the model for sheriffs all over the United States I'm going to talk about you in a minute there Frank

18:11 um but anyway I think you all know that our crime rates are the highest they've ever been in the history of the United States we have more mass murders than any first world country we have more carjackings we have more homicides we are the number one leader of First World countries in sex trafficking of children think about that it's pretty disgusting Florida were tough our crime rate is pretty low but the rest of the country is melting so what we have come up with is making Crime Stoppers an example for the whole entire United States some states don't even use the star star tips some Crime Stoppers are broke but I

18:51 wanted to say that this crime stopper is the nation's example you not only can call star star tips you can go to our app and people ask me all the time especially teenagers if I see a kid in my class who I think is going to be a a serial killer or a mass shooter I don't know who to call I'm not going to call 9-1-1 and I go why and they say well 9-1-1 they publicize it's easy to find out who the caller was you can recognize the voice I said so okay call star star tips we guarantee at Crime Stoppers that you will remain anonymous and that you

19:26 will get paid we will guarantee that you will get paid that reward kind of interesting that in most crime stopper states have to be have to reward money isn't isn't claimed people are doing it all those years that did America's Most Wanted 25 years we never gave out Awards periodically a million dollar reward for an FBI top 10 fugitive but 50 of the time I gave rewards very small amount of time people didn't claim their rewards they wanted to do the right thing so we want people to know two things crime stopper guarantees an anonymity even if you're not calling about a fugitive if you're calling about a potential problem if you're calling about someone you know we don't care

20:08 about your name whether you're legal illegal where you're from tell us where the Dirtbag is and we will make sure that if there's a reward and you want that reward you're going to get that reward we made Crime Stoppers the safest place in the United States to report a crime or a potential crime so Frank you've done a great job making Florida the role model that I believe it is making it it's it's the example you've done great work we got a lot more to do we've got to educate the rest of the country on how to do it the right way how to do Crime Stoppers the right way and tell Floridians what the number is we don't you don't have to call

20:46 individual Crime Stoppers numbers you can go star star tips or you can go to our app and get all the information you want now our job is to let everybody in Florida know what that number is and Frank was the father of this effort and has done an incredible job as executive director of the Florida Crime Stoppers Association Frank come up here and thank you for all your hard work good morning it's great to be here in Palm Beach which by the way I'll show you how old I am Palm Beach for those of you that don't know who holds the distinction of being the first student or campus crime stopper program in the country so you have a lot to be proud of

21:27 a rich tradition here for Crime Stoppers in Palm Beach County so on behalf of the 26 crime stopper programs throughout the State of Florida and our Network I can't tell you how happy and proud I am to be here with our ongoing partnership with the Attorney General's office this year we're celebrating our 25 years but I need to give a shout out to attorney general Ashley Moody she's the fifth attorney general in Florida that I've worked with in Head and Shoulders in my opinion the the best the most Innovative and the most proactive and engaging Crime Stoppers and citizens in our fight against Crime

22:06 of course we're really excited now about having someone that's going to help to get the word out with John Walsh and so you know a lot of people took the pandemic off you know the things slowed down there wasn't a whole lot going on but we utilized that time to not just um work harder but to think and work smarter and we've said we need to come up with ways to leverage technology to make it easy for our communities and residents to report crime so short of swearing in every resident in the State of Florida making them a

22:42 sworn Deputy in essence by Crime Stoppers and the tools that we have we can get them engaged I like to call them this community ambassadors we all want to work as the general said to make our state stronger and safer so not only do we have our traditional phone numbers that people have called we have star star tips we have the ability to go online to websites and with a couple of clicks you can report crime that way or you can also use our Florida Crime Stoppers app but the Hallmark of it is is we like to talk about the three R's of Crime Stoppers you've heard about the three R's of Education we have the

23:20 three R's of Crime Stoppers report remain and receive it's report crime remain anonymous and receive a cash reward a lot of people ask how do you remain anonymous when you report any crime stopper to any Crime Stop or crime that way or you can also use our Florida Crime Stoppers app but the Hallmark of it is is we like to talk about the three R's of Crime Stoppers you've heard about the three R's of Education we have the three R's of Crime Stoppers report remain and receive it's report crime remain anonymous and receive a cash reward a lot of people ask how do you remain

24:59 anonymous when you report any crime stopper to any Crime Stop passion and envelope and the person drives away completely Anonymous I can tell you that passion and envelope and the person drives away get them engaged I like to call them this community ambassadors we all want to work as the general said to make our state stronger and safer so not only do we have our traditional phone numbers that people have called we have star star tips we have the ability to go online to websites and with a couple of clicks you can report crime that way or

26:39 you can also use our Florida Crime Stoppers app but the Hallmark of it is is we like to talk about the three R's of Crime Stoppers you've heard about the three R's of Education we have the three R's of Crime Stoppers report remain and receive it's report crime remain anonymous and receive a cash reward a lot of people ask how do you remain anonymous when you report any crime stopper to any Crime Stop s report any crime stopper to any Crime Stop s uh through our crime tipster that has passion and envelope and the person

27:52 drives away passion and envelope and the person drives away passion and envelope when the person drives away completely anonymous I can tell you that I'm not aware of any tipster that has been compromised in decades uh through our crime stopper program here in the State of Florida so we've done an awful lot but now the big part is is to get the word out to our community and that's what we're so excited about John Walsh is making the public aware that they can report this crime they can remain anonymous and depending upon the crime can be eligible

28:53 for a huge reward so we're really excited about launching from here we've done a lot of great things but we can do better we'd love to see the crime rate here in the State of Florida continue to drop and to be the lowest we're the third largest state in the Union but wouldn't it be great for us to have the lowest crime rate anywhere in the country even compared to like North Dakota or Wyoming somewhere where basically the only crime is cow tipping so we we're really excited about this and I just want to thank all the partners and thank you to sheriff Bradshaw for hosting this thank you foreign

29:27 all right well we appreciate you being here as you can tell we are really excited not just about the announcement of this campaign and initiative to enlist Floridians to help us solve crime using star star tips or the Florida Crime Stoppers app that we have recently developed and launched that is also important but we are also excited that we get to live in the state like Florida with so many men and women committed every day and passionate about making this the strongest and safest state in the nation we'd be happy to take any questions that that you may have at this time please

30:09 yes ma'am yes so we established it a couple of years ago uh got that up and running it then became a nationwide number based on Florida's example and now we're launching the campaign to roll this out to Floridians to get them involved with John Walsh and hopefully I read you the numbers previously I can do that again I think it was last year alone in the last 12 months 59 000 citizen tips were reported to Florida Crime Stoppers we're hoping that that number increases with the launch of this campaign you'll be seeing more of us and more of John Walsh through social media and videos to

31:03 encourage more participation in solving crimes all right well thank you so much we appreciate you being here there's lots of law enforcement here there's U.S Marshals sheriffs last year was the deadliest year in the history of law enforcement more cops got killed in the line of duty we may break that this year so all the cops that are here God bless you thank you for risking your lives to keep us safe thank you so much thank you for saying that and we appreciate always those that are willing to promote and announce the incredible Heroes that serve this state those that are that are learning and training now

31:42 to serve this state as our new law enforcement Heroes Florida has embarked on a nationwide campaign I launched a be a Florida hero initiative to recruit folks from around the nation that want to join you that want to join you and be part of a state that lifts up and promotes uh this incredible profession of law enforcement we thank you our family thank you and the future success of the state relies on you we appreciate you so much "[Applause]" God bless you guys foreign