Tips have been pouring in for most cases at Chambersburg Police Department. Here's why.

If you commit a crime in Chambersburg, there’s a good chance someone will tip off the police.

Thanks to a web of surveillance cameras around the borough and Chambersburg Police Department’s prolific use of a platform called Crimewatch to share photos of possible suspects and vehicles, about 75% of crimes lead to at least one tip, according to Police Chief Ron Camacho.

"If we got a good picture, we're gonna get a tip," he said.

In 2023, CPD received 399 tips from the community — up from 262 the year before, according to the department's 2023 Crimewatch Impact Report. CPD is one of Crimewatch's top agencies for tip submissions.

"When your tips jump up that much, it lets you know you're doing something right," Camacho said. "The community is rewarding us with their trust and their help. Their help is an incredibly important piece to modern policing."

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Communication is integral to CPD's positive relationship with the community, Camacho said. So is the department's mission to investigate every incident, no matter how minor or seemingly unsolvable.

The police department's clear rate — cases that are solved or otherwise closed — is higher than the state average each year. In 2023, it cleared nearly 67% of "part two offenses," including sexual assault, vandalism and drug violations, and 45.5% of "part one offenses," such as rape, robbery, assault and motor vehicle thefts — far better than the state average of 51.5% and 24%, respectively.

“We don’t want people to be victims of crimes. It’s that team effort to help the person who was victimized or to help prevent someone from being victimized — that’s why the community relationship we have, through Crimewatch, and them giving us tips is so important,” said Inspector Meredith Dominick, the administrative lieutenant at CPD.

If you steal snacks from Sheetz, someone who knows you will likely see you in a surveillance image on Crimewatch. If you side-swiped a parked car while driving down South Main Street the other day, there's probably already a photo of it online.

Camacho highlighted a recent case in which a vehicle was pictured driving around on a baseball field. Five or so tips came in and helped police identify the driver.

A report of gunshots may not get much attention from some police departments because it can be difficult to investigate, Camacho said. However, a report that someone fired multiple shots into the air on Glen Street one night in mid-March led to 11 tips from citizens who found the perpetrator's incriminating social media posts.

"Very quickly we were able to not only identify this person, we were able to gather evidence against this person, we were able to put together enough to get a warrant," Camacho said.

Tips were used with other evidence to identify suspects behind the bomb threat at the Franklin County Judicial Center on April 10. Information from three tips and phone data helped investigators charge brothers Chadwin Rogers and Jason Rogers in the incident, in which the county court facilities were evacuated and Chambersburg's square was closed to traffic for hours while police and bomb-sniffing K-9s searched for explosives.

"The solvability of (a bomb threat) is very small," Camacho said, adding it was only the second bomb threat that resulted in an arrest in his three decades in law enforcement.

As shift supervisor, Sgt. Corey Fegan gets the first look at submitted tips and distributes them to the appropriate detectives depending on the type of crime.

"We also get tips from other communities that we disseminate because (their police departments) don't have their own platform," Fegan said.

A 2019 robbery involving several teens was the first case where tips had a big impact, Camacho said.

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Jump in tips and technology's role in modern policing

Clicking on a button and typing a message is all it takes to send a tip through Crimewatch, and no name or contact information is required. A tipster can call the station instead, but Camacho said phone tips are rare.

"We used to do phone calls, now people would rather text. You can send in a tip and don't have to talk," he said.

From community engagement to the ease of texting a tip, the reasons behind the increase in tips also show how technology drives law enforcement agencies to evolve.

"We have a different mindset," Dominick said. "The advantages to being able to solve crime and help people lend to our work ethic. It's not to say the work ethic wasn’t here 30, 40 years ago, but this technology really has moved us forward.

"Imagine where we'll be 30 years from now, imagine the technology that's on the cutting edge right now that just hasn’t been implemented yet and how it's going to push us even more further to solve crimes and help victims."

2016 was turning point for Chambersburg PD

Camacho's hiring in the summer of 2016 coincided with the department joining Crimewatch. CPD transitioned from releasing hard copies of police reports primarily to media outlets to sharing information online where anyone can access it.

Nearly eight years later, Crimewatch highlights CPD's success using the platform to attract new clients. The police department is one of the top users among the 308 agencies across the country, according to the Crimewatch Impact Report.

CPD uses Crimewatch to post crime and incident reports, details about people who are wanted for arrest, alerts about traffic and crashes, and public safety announcements. The department also frequently shares messages of gratitude, such as one in early April that thanked the community for the influx of tips and encouraged people to keep the tips coming.

The department published 850 posts in 2023, and each post was pushed out to CPD's more than 7,200 subscribers, according to the Crimewatch report. Posts also go up on CPD's Facebook, which thousands more people follow.

"Right now about a quarter of the community of Chambersburg are subscribed. We would love to push that number up even more," Camacho said.

Overall, CPD's Crimewatch page had 488,396 visitors last year — making it the second most-visited Crimewatch site nationally. Chambersburg had almost 12,000 fewer visits than the No. 1 site, the Bucks County District Attorney's Office, and 66,190 more visits than a Colorado sheriff's office at No. 3.

Among agencies serving populations of 18,000 to 30,000 people, CPD was No. 1 for visitors and pieces of content. It was No. 2 for tips, behind Carlisle Police Department (1,584 tips).

CPD was ranked fifth for tips among all Crimewatch agencies, not far behind York City and Lancaster City police departments which both received around 450 tips. Pennsylvania Crime Stoppers — which operates to obtain tips about crimes — received 4,812.

Check out CPD's Crimewatch page at chambersburgpolice.com.

Amber South can be reached at asouth@publicopinionnews.com.

This article originally appeared on Chambersburg Public Opinion: Crimewatch, engagement drives up tips for Chambersburg PD