On a typical board, there are those who sit and those who serve.
Fred Bell, a founding member of the Golden Triangle Crime Stoppers, was definitely among the latter. During its monthly meeting held at Justice Court in West Point on Wednesday, the Crime Stoppers Board of Directors, Bell’s fellow board members and area law enforcement took time out to honor Bell, who is retiring from the chapter he helped form in 1991.
“I honestly don’t know if we could have put this together without Fred,” said board member Pete Bowen who was the Columbus police chief when the local chapter of the national Crime Stoppers organization began operations on Oct. 31, 1991.
“I just call him Mr. Crime Stoppers,” said Clay County Sheriff Eddie Scott, who serves as board president for the chapter, which includes Clay, Lowndes, Monroe, Oktibbeha and Noxubee counties.
Crime Stoppers, founded in 1976 in New Mexico, is a community-based program that solicits anonymous tips from the community to help solve crimes ranging from theft to murder. Golden Triangle Crime Stoppers pays informants anywhere from $100 to $1,000 for information that leads to an arrest, based on the nature of the crime.
Today, Golden Triangle Crime Stoppers is funded largely by annual contributions from area cities and counties, along with donations from the community, But in 1991, when Bowen and others were organizing the chapter, it relied entirely on donations.
Bell, who worked in the retail business in Columbus at the time, proved critical not only to setting up the nonprofit, but in soliciting donations from local businesses.
“When we got started, it was definitely from scratch,” Bowen said. “Mr. Bell was involved in just about everything we did.”
Bell secured an attorney to help the organization set up its charity and draw up guidelines for the program. But it was his influence as a fundraiser that proved critical in those early days.
“We really had to scramble to come up with the money we needed,” Bowen said. “For a lot of years, we held telethons, but a lot of it was just going to businesses and asking for their support. Mr. Bell was really good at that.”
Bell, 84, said he was happy to play a role in organizing the local chapter of Crime Stoppers.
“At the time, we had a lot of crime all over the area,” he said. “So when I heard this thing was being organized, I joined in because I thought if (citizens) don’t have an active part in cleaning up our neighborhoods, who will?”
Wednesday’s board meeting was both typical and atypical, as the monthly report indicated.
The coordinator’s report listed 10 credible tips. Typically, that number ranges from 10 to 15 after the dozens of tips are investigated.
Unlike most months, there were no arrests reported or payouts.
“That’s sort of unusual,” Bowen said. “Most months we’ll have two or three.”
Since 1991, the local Crime Stoppers has paid out more than $300,000 to more than 1,000 tipsters.
“We’ve had millions and millions of dollars of stolen property recovered and taken so many felons off the street,” Bowen said. “It’s doing what we hoped it would do when we started this.”
Bell says he’s proud of have been part of Crime Stoppers
“I think it shows what can happen when citizens and law enforcement work together,” he said. “We’ve had so many good people working on this over the years, people who just want to help their neighborhoods and make them safer. I’m proud to have been a part of it.”
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
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