Ever taken a call that solves a murder?

Thousands of people just like you contact us every week to tell us about a crime. Each call to 0800 555 111 and every Anonymous Online Form sent through the Crimestoppers website is looked at by an agent in our contact centre.

Behind the Scenes

One of our agents gives us a look behind the scenes at what happens when your information comes through:

Giving callers time and empathy is important

Being a Crimestoppers call agent is a job like no other and no two days are ever the same. In fact, no two calls are ever the same! Most of my colleagues would agree with me when I say the highlight of the job is talking to people.

We help to ease some of the burden that can develop when you know information but are not sure what to do with it. When such callers speak to me I always put myself in their situation. This helps me to remember that sometimes picking up the phone and talking to a stranger about an awful situation is not easy. I can then empathise with my caller and give them my full attention as they are telling me the situation that they want to report.

We're committed to keeping you anonymous

There are no police officers or police staff at the contact centre. We are trained to have a personable conversation with someone rather than interrogating them for facts and figures. We don't take the name of the person that calls us and no recordings are made.

The skills we are taught allow us to get as much information as possible without ever compromising a caller's anonymity. Callers are often surprised at how much information they do know, it just takes some of our skill to dig around and root it out!

As well as taking calls we also process information that has been sent anonymously online. This is a completely different part of the job as we only have the information the person has written to work with. We treat this information exactly as we would if we had taken a call; our main priority is to protect the person giving the information.

Online forms make up over 50% of our workload and it offers us some diversity during the day as we switch between taking calls and processing forms.

We're making communities safer together

Unfortunately for us, because the nature of our anonymous work, we do not hear about what happens after we finish talking to the people who call us. Sometimes we do hear about information that was given to Crimestoppers leading to someone being arrested or charged with a crime.

Over the years we've had lots of fantastic results. They give us a boost as it is proof that Crimestoppers works and it is even better when you remember taking the call yourself!