For about two years, the Little Rock Police Department experienced a virtual case of mail being sent repeatedly to the wrong address. Luckily, it came back.
Until last month, Little Rock residents could click a link on the police department section on the city’s website to submit an anonymous crime tip to investigators. But instead of directing the information to police in Little Rock, the form would send the information roughly 1,800 miles to an office in Seattle.
It happened because the Little Rock website mistakenly sent users to a Crime Stoppers of Puget Sound tip submission form. The Seattle-based organization uses the form — created by the firm TipSoft — to elicit information from residents who wish to report crime tips anonymously. Because it was linked from Little Rock’s site, some people used it to report tips on crimes in Arkansas, only to have them redirected to the Northwest.
The link, which read, “CRIMESTOPPERS — Submit a drug or crime tip anonymously,” was removed from LittleRock.org last month after a reporter asked city and police spokesmen about the error.
For Ilona Bodderij, a regional coordinator for Crime Stoppers of Puget Sound, the misleading link did solve an apparent mystery.
“I was like, ‘OK, no wonder I got [Little Rock] tips,’” she said.
Bodderij confirmed her agency had received Little Rock tips, but she couldn’t estimate the amount. Through the TipSoft program, she was able to send them back to Little Rock. In an email Friday, Bodderij said the Puget Sound TipSoft program “started sending tips regularly” to Little Rock Crime Stoppers from August 2014 to early this month.
Sgt. Cassandra Davis, the former Crime Stoppers coordinator for Little Rock police, said she had received Little Rock tips from Seattle via email during the timeframe Bodderij described. The tips stopped coming from Seattle around July 21, Davis said.
Again, mystery solved.
“I always wondered why I was getting tips from Seattle,” Davis said Monday.
Davis, who now works in the department’s internal affairs division, said it wasn’t unusual for her to receive tips from law enforcement agencies in Arkansas and throughout the nation. The tips would arrive in her email, and she would read them before sending them to the necessary investigators.
Little Rock police used to employ the TipSoft program, beginning around 2004 or 2005, Davis said. A request under Arkansas’ Freedom of Information Act yielded an invoice billed to Little Rock Crime Stoppers from Public Engines, the creator of TipSoft. It showed that the police department purchased a subscription renewal for the online TipSoft form on Aug. 1, 2014. The renewal cost $1,680 and had a service period of Sept. 22, 2014, to Sept. 21, 2015.
It’s unclear how the link to the Puget Sound Crime Stoppers forum made it onto Little Rock’s municipal website, officials from the city and police department said. Internet archives indicate the link, with the same URL, has been on the site since at least September 2014. According to an archived Web snapshot, the link was not there June 10, 2014.
Lt. Steve McClanahan, the current spokesman for Little Rock police, said he hadn’t used the link since he became the department’s public affairs director.
“I have not [referred] anyone to that” since becoming spokesman in 2015, McClanahan said.
Instead, McClanahan has used social media to encourage the public to submit information to police, telling residents to call (501) 371-4636 to provide anonymous tips.
As for the link forwarding users to Puget Sound, Jennifer Godwin, a spokesman for the city, said it was likely an oversight but that she “can’t speak for the police department.” Until recently, she said, the city did not have a designated staff member in charge of Web content.
“There’s not much collaboration between the city and the police department as far as putting that on the site,” Davis said in July regarding the TipSoft form.
A new website is on the way, and it will feature more collaboration between the police and city.
“Going forward, you will see a much more concerted website effort,” Godwin said.