Crime Stoppers is an independent charity that helps New Zealanders to fight crime by providing an anonymous and simple way to pass on information to the authorities. We are not the police. We protect our sources. We destroy all identifying details of your report.

We are not. Crime Stoppers is a totally independent charity that uses our own call centre operators to ensure all members of our community who do not wish to contact the Police directly have the ability to provide information about a crime, or other vital information to the authorities, anonymously. We give our absolute guarantee that no identifying information will be passed on to the authorities.

Crime Stoppers is not an enforcement organisation. We support those who for whatever reason can’t report directly to the authorities but still wish to be good citizens and stop wrong-doing in the communities we live in. If you need to report a crime where you are the victim (car theft, assault, etc.), need immediate help, victim support or support in general then Crime Stoppers cannot assist and so call 111 or 105 for Police matters or appropriate numbers for Corrections, Customs and Immigration.

No, official Police complaints must be made directly to the Police. This is for such requirements as insurance and other such matters. The information you provide will be used by the Police to start a new investigation or add to the records of an existing one. Because it is not an official complaint, the information you provide Police cannot be used as evidence in pursuit of a conviction.

We do not. Even the call number is blocked from our operators call screens and we work hard to ensure that the information received, even if known, is not passed to any other organisation.

We can never guarantee that, but we do guarantee that the details of the caller or person sending the web report are removed and that the report accurately represents what the caller said or what was included in the web submission. The authorities will then verify the information received from us. We simply facilitate the information getting to the right agency anonymously.

We do everything humanly possible to remove any identifying statements or information from our reports if you want to remain anonymous. Our agents are also aware of and try to remove statements that may identify any informant such as when they may state “I live next door to this person” and give the person’s address. Our integrity revolves around our anonymous guarantee and we take our stated position seriously. When you do want to record your name, we usually check to ensure that this was not done accidentally.

We receive a proportion of our funding from the authorities (Police, Corrections, Immigration and Customs), from commercial partners (such as One NZ), from public donations (we are a registered charity) and from a separate business based on supplying integrity lines to organisations. None of our funders are involved in the operational oversight of Crime Stoppers and all funding is provided knowing that we control all our services and that our anonymous guarantee is our fundamental reason for being.

That is difficult because of our anonymity guarantee and because the information passed on may not be the final or only straw in the process. In many cases, getting the full evidence may take months.

It may take some time for the police or other agency to act on the information you have given. There may be many reasons for this – the information may be crucial to a larger investigation and an action may take place much later on, or the information may remain on file helping to solve crime at a later date. So even if you don’t see a quick resolution, don’t think your information hasn’t been of use to Crime Stoppers.