Española’s Interim Police Chief Mizel Garcia showed the strength of a great one-two punch this week.
Only months into his new job he has demonstrated what can happen with someone who grew up here but moved away to develop his career, in this case he went to Albuquerque where he spent 27 years doing police work.
He is now bringing his outside professional experience to help improve life in his hometown.
Tuesday, May 10, he formalized with the city council a plan to renew the nationwide Crime Stoppers Program.
In its simplest forms the program offers monetary rewards for tips helping to identify and hopefully catch criminals.
Chief Garcia watched the program work in Albuquerque where Crime Stoppers fell under his department. He’s convinced
Albuquerque to help Española and Rio Arriba County initiate the program at no cost to either the city or county.
He’s also bringing it to our schools where students can even text a tip.
The key to this program is anonymity and all tips are screened and processed in Texas where anything that reveal the identity of the tipster is scrubbed from the system.
Rewards for a tip can be as high as $1,000.
Money is an incentive for a tip but not the only one. Chief Garcia says much of the time the motivation to send in a tip is to help the community reduce crime and catch criminals.
Española tried Crime Stoppers once before but abandoned the program shortly because of lack of funds and lack of community involvement.
The Rio Grande Sun is going to its part to help with community involvement and run advertising and promotions in the paper and online for free to promote Crime Stoppers.