This month, Crime Stoppers of Halton having been holding community engagement sessions around Oakville in light of the recently launched Community Watch program.
The engagement sessions included canvassing at Oakville Place Mall and door-to-door canvassing around southeast Oakville, all aimed at spreading information about the pilot program and encouraging residents to sign up for the Community Watch newsletter.
Oakville News first reported on the new project back in October 2024, when it was announced that southeast Oakville (and areas of ward 3) would be the launch site for the new pilot program.
Read more here: Pamphlets, newsletters explaining the program and nonprofit, and window clings were distributed to the public
Pamphlets, newsletters explaining the program and nonprofit, and window clings were distributed to the public. These materials also provide crime prevention tips, including theft and home invasion prevention.
The Community Watch pilot program launched Oct. 22, 2024 and "encourages the public to work with Crime Stoppers of Halton, by submitting tips on crimes anonymously, via telephone, at 1-800-222-TIPS (8477) or through an online portal , rather than submitting tips directly to Halton Police."
"Our anonymous tip line serves a huge purpose for people who do not want to go to court and do not want to give their names," said Colin Jessome, executive director of Crime Stoppers of Halton.
"We are the only service that is afforded to do that. The Supreme Court of Canada has ruled that the same status that you give to confidential informants is what's granted to us as Crime Stoppers."
According to Jessome, people who submit a tip (or as Jessome and Crime Stoppers of Halton like to call them: tipsters) online get their messages sent through a third-party source called P3 Navigate 360, which is frequently used for anonymous tip lines across Canada and the United States.
Tipsters who use call in have their messages sent through a call centre, which then gets sent to the Crime Stoppers of Halton's program.
From there Jessome says the calls are vetted and "cleaned up" by himself and a police detective that's assigned to the program to ensure that the tips are truly anonymously. "Sometimes a tipster might say something along the lines of 'my neighbour' has done this. Now it's indicative," he said.
These vetted tips are then submitted to the police to help with a case or to provide general information about the neighbourhood.
"Even if it's small, we'll take it and we'll run with it because it could attach to something that's already known," Jessome said.
The program also offers tipsters a reward of up to $2,000 upon arrest.
The Community Watch program is what Jessome calls a modernized approach to the typical neighbourhood watch programs, by removing the emphasis on residents having to run the programs themselves and changing the name to make it more community-focused.
"For longevity and consistency's sake, let us — who've been operating at Halton for over 35 years — run it and see what we can do," he said.
Currently, the program is running in Ward 3 in Oakville, which Jessome says was chosen due to high levels of crime, especially auto thefts and break-and-enters. There is a possibility that the program will expand throughout the entire Halton Region.
For now, Jessome is encouraging people to volunteer with the nonprofit and join the Community Watch program by signing up for its online newsletters which comes out every six to eight weeks.