LIHU‘E — The Kaua‘i Police Department has welcomed Marco Valera as the new head of the Crime Stoppers Kaua‘i program.
His duties include managing the anonymous-tip system, community-outreach activities and communicating with state and regional Crime Stoppers’ leadership.
“I look forward to building out this program and demonstrating how useful of a tool this will be in our community,” said Valera. “It takes all of us to maintain a safe island, and it’s all of our kuleana to make sure that our island remains safe.”
Valera has already been responsible for a number of changes and updates to the program, such as playing a vital role in closing a number of cold cases. He has also implemented many capital improvements, including facilitating a new, user-friendly website. The new URL for Crime Stoppers Kaua‘i is cskauai.org.
Crime Stoppers Kaua‘i is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit which amped up its efforts in 2018 by incorporating and forming a board of directors so that more community members could feel comfortable reporting criminal activity by maintaining anonymity.
“Residents often feel reluctant to come forward with information related to a crime for a number of reasons, especially in a small community,” said Valera. “Crime Stoppers provides a method to report on crime without releasing your identity or personal information.”
Crime Stoppers Kaua‘i is made possible through an ongoing partnership between citizens, the media, Kaua‘i Chamber of Commerce, Visitor Aloha Society of Kaua‘i, Grove Farm Company, state Department of Education and KPD in order to battle crime and make the community safe for kupuna, keiki and all ‘ohana on Kaua‘i.
When calling Crime Stoppers, Valera will ask for the following information: type of illegal activity, location of activity, date and time of incident, and a description of suspect(s) and/or suspect vehicle(s). Calls are kept anonymous, and callers are given a tracking tip number for future identification purposes.
The caller is then advised to call back to check the status of the tip that was given. If the information received from the caller was valid and an arrest was made, the caller could receive a reward of up to $1,000.
Anyone with information on criminal activity who wishes to remain anonymous is urged to call Crime Stoppers Kaua‘i at 246-8300 or visit the website.
Some board, cops wives or retired cops. They will really keep it anonymous.