As Prices Rise, Crime Tipsters Work Overtime

[Newsjock]

Source: New York Times

To gas prices, foreclosure rates and the cost of rice, add this rising economic indicator: the number of tips to the police from people hoping to collect reward money.

Calls to the Southwest Florida Crime Stoppers hot line in the first quarter of this year were up 30 percent over last year. San Antonio had a 44 percent increase. Cities and towns from Detroit to Omaha to Beaufort County, N.C., all report increases of 25 percent or more in the first quarter, with tipsters telling operators they need the money for rent, light bills or baby formula.

... On Friday, a woman called the Regional Crime Stoppers line in Macon, Ga., to find out when she could pick up her reward money for a recent tip. She was irritated to learn that she would have to wait until Monday.

“I’m in a bind, I’m really in a bind,” she told the hot-line operator. “There’s a lot of stuff I know, but I didn’t open my mouth. If I weren’t in a bind, I wouldn’t open my mouth.”

When she learned the money was not available, she said she would call back with the whereabouts of another suspect whom she had just seen “going down the road.”

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/18/us/18crimestopper.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1211148188-Yn2SIY1ljCYmrj4PHegBKQ

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

1. Newsjock is a terrorist.

Send the money to:

[Newsjock]

2. Too late!

Been on the watch list for at least three years now.

[Jack Rabbit]

3. That looks like a bar code turned on its side

It reads: Milk 2 gal $5.99

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

4. 2 gallons for $5.99?

What fantasy world are you living in?

That's a pint in these parts!