BUSTING THE BADDIES
March 15, 1998 No. 11 (490) - News

          Police feel confident their new crime line will help to fight fear and indifference. The first 100 telephone calls taken by officers on duty at the national police info-line may lead to the investigation of five new cases. Police have not disclosed what these cases are concerned with, but say it is a promising beginning for the service. The line was launched at the beginning of March and is the first free nationwide police info-line. Senior police officials claim callers can even use the line to report cases of corruption in the police force itself. For several months, police hotlines have been in operation in most Polish cities implementing programs for fighting crime, modeled after the Crime Stopper project pioneered in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
          The main reason behind the introduction of these lines is citizens' fear-of which police are aware-of becoming a formal witness. The fear also existed prior to 1989, although temporary detention was used much more frequently with regard to suspects, and verdicts calling for imprisonment were handed out more often. But today, with liberalized legal regulations, a person testifying against someone else must take into account the fact that they will continue to see the suspect on their street or staircase. Anonymous reports remove this fear."Police are absolutely prohibited from asking questions about a caller's personal data or about anything that can even indirectly make identification of the caller possible," says Witold Gierałt, press spokesman for Warsaw Police Headquarters. "Instead they can ask the caller to call them back and refer the case to appropriate police units in the relevant area."
"We started out by dealing with crimes generating the greatest social opposition," says Wiesław Dziurdziak of Chełm's Provincial Police Headquarters. "We appealed for information on the production of narcotics and their sale to minors." As a result of the operation of police hotlines, several school dealers have been detained, and several illegal-substance production facilities have been shut down. Dziurdziak says that callers no longer have to overcome their fear-the only obstacles now are laziness and indifference.
          The most advanced program is in Radom, where the local police announce through the local media what information it especially seeks at a given time. At times, the police info-line is designated for the war against drugs, and at other times it is designed to help crack down on car thieves. "We guarantee full anonymity and contact callers with the use of five-digit codes," says Tadeusz Kaczmarek of the Radom police. "Before Christmas, we announced we were interested in finding out about workshops used by car thieves to forge the factory numbers of stolen cars. We received the first call within two hours. In all, we recovered nine vehicles, including two worth more than zl.100,000 each. We also reached a person who had not reported a theft and was collecting money for a 'ransom' to pay the thieves to recover his car." The best results were attained after the hotlines were widely promoted. Kaczmarek says that in every talk with Radom reporters, he insisted on the constant publication of the telephone numbers. In the city, the numbers can be found at the train station and bus stops.
          In Radom, prizes are offered to callers. The mayor has established a zl.5,000 prize for a person whose report leads to the capture of dangerous criminals; the prize has not been awarded to anyone yet. Instead, prizes of up to zl.1,000 from the coffers of the provincial chief of police are available to people identifying the hide-outs of prisoners who fail to return to the detention center from their temporary leaves on parole; a prize has also been offered to a person identifying the culprit behind bomb false alarms. Other people have received prizes in the amount of 1 percent of the value of stolen items recovered from thieves.
          But the media doesn't always work with the police as eagerly as it does in Radom. Gierałt admits that his morning press review is a frustrating responsibility for him. "After two months of effort, only two newspapers publish our numbers; we are at the mercy of the good will of the media," he says. Besides, police say, the telephone numbers are difficult for people to remember, and it took a long time to persuade Telekomunikacja Polska to make them available. Gierałt says most phone calls are from chance witnesses; criminals' neighbors and acquaintances call much less often. Sometimes former accomplices, creditors, debtors and abandoned lovers call to take revenge on someone. Criminals are also reported by rival criminal rings. Robert Miller, spokesman for police in Gdaqsk, believes this is how three large narcotic-production facilities were uncovered in January and February.
          Callers provide information about crimes ranging from hit-and-run accidents to tax evasion to crimes leading to the loss of lives and injuries. Sometimes a caller's information is about a car theft from five years ago, but other times it's about garages in which more than 10 newly stolen cars are kept. Police believe that even though a full analysis of the results of the first stage of the Polish version of the Crime Stopper program will take several more months, the project makes police operations easier. People call and every week there is a report that makes it possible to crack down on criminals or prevent a planned violation of the law.

Piotr Golik