Inside Crimestoppers: How the ‘Sarah Everard effect’ is solving crimes – one anonymous call at a time

Inside Crimestoppers: How the ‘Sarah Everard effect’ is solving crimes – one anonymous call at a time Anonymous reports to Crimestoppers are soaring because of the erosion of trust in policing in the wake of the murder of Sarah Everard, Amy-Clare Martin discovers on a visit inside the crime-fighting charity - Bookmark Become an Independent member to bookmark this article Already a member? Log in In an unmarked office in a London suburb, Crimestoppers call centre agents are listening intently. The calls they are taking could potentially save a life by stopping a serious crime from being committed or provide the vital intelligence needed to crack a major case. Every day, they triage up to 3,000 anonymous reports from members of the public about everything from drug dealing, murder and domestic abuse to fly-tipping and tax evasion. The day’s calls and online forms will generate around 800 pieces of intelligence which they pass to law enforcement agencies across the country, 365 days a year. The crucial information the charity gathers, usually from those too fearful to speak to the police, has helped to solve or prevent at least 35,791 crimes in the past year alone - and the true impact is likely even higher. “It's kind of an insurance service for society in many respects,” chief executive Mark Hallas, a former head of intelligence and security at the army, tells The Independent. “Sometimes one tiny bit of information can be the difference between life and death, between a massive result or not.” Founded by former Conservative party politician Lord Michael Ashcroft in 1988 in the wake of the murder of PC Keith Blakelock during Broadwater Farm riots in Tottenham a few years earlier, the concept was simple: to give people who were unable or unwilling to speak to police a safe, anonymous way to share information. PC Blakelock had been brutally stabbed during clashes which erupted in north London as tensions with the Metropolitan Police boiled over. “People knew what had happened, but it was a kind of estate where you didn't talk to the police directly for self-preservation reasons,” Mr Hallas says. “Lord Ashcroft, our founder and chair, sat down with the then commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Kenneth Newman, and then Lord Peter Imbert, and said, ‘look, there's got to be a way. These people are not going to talk to the police, but some of them do want to do the right thing, so how do we do that?’” Loosely modelled on an initiative founded in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in 1976, Crimestoppers UK began as a simple phone line called the Community Action Trust. Since then, it has evolved into the major charity that operates today. In its near 40-year history, the intelligence it has generated has led to hundreds of thousands of arrests and demand is soaring to record highs. The number of reports they pass to law enforcement has more than doubled in a decade, with more than 250,000 sent in the year to March 2026, out of more than 827,442 total contacts from members of the public. Growth has surged fastest in the past five years, something the Crimewatch team attributes - in part - to the “Sarah Everard effect” after the shocking case damaged public confidence in policing. The 33-year-old marketing executive was kidnapped, raped and murdered in 2021 by serving Metropolitan Police officer Wayne Couzens, who was handed a rare whole life order for the crime. Chillingly, he had used his police warrant card to convince her to get into his car. Mr Hallas says the incident “eroded trust in policing”, adding that Crimestoppers now operates a nationwide dedicated Police Anti-Corruption Abuse Reporting Service. “I think trust and confidence in policing has taken a bit of a hit,” he adds. “So whilst that might not be great for society as a whole, it has meant that I think a lot of people kind of channel shifted and come across to us because they know that they contact us safely, securely, and above all else anonymously.” He admits that when he took over 13 years ago, “we looked and sounded too much like the police” but said they have since been on a journey to stress their independence and anonymity. Louise Peers, who has spent 20 years leading their contact centre, agreed there is “huge suspicion now” about police officers. “People just don't want to speak to the police, even so far as they don't want to phone 101,” she says. “They don't want to speak to police staff. They don't want to be recorded. You know, they don't want to engage at all, and they will actively avoid that. “Unfortunately, you know, it's not great, but we are here for those people, and we do have this alternative reporting mechanism.” Along with increased campaigning by Crimestoppers and public frustration with 101 call waiting times, it seems demand for her 50-strong team, who work a 24 hour rota, is not going to slow down any time soon. This includes a 73 per cent year on year surge in time-critical reports, where they receive information about a crime in progress, a threat to someone’s life or serious safeguarding concerns. This can be very stressful for handlers, who have to make fast decisions to ensure key opportunities for law enforcement to act are not lost. “I personally remember where someone was watching an incident from the bedroom window,” she says. “In the end the agents were on the phone to the person, on the phone to the police, and we're trying to protect the source because they were so scared that someone would a see them at the window on the phone, or blue lights would turn up at their door looking for a statement.” Despite the pressures, she is committed to empowering her team to have a proper conversation with the person on the other end. Unlike most call centres, there are no canned answers or scripts for agents to follow, so handlers can build a rapport with the caller to get the best quality information possible. And although the charity is perhaps best-known for its cash rewards, which it offers for information which helps to solve difficult cases, only a tiny fraction of them are ever claimed. “It is not and has never been the motivating factor,” Ms Peers says, adding that most people who call in do not ask for the money. The majority of reports are received in an encrypted online form, but 25 per cent still call the phone line. What is most import, Ms Peers says, is their unwavering commitment to anonymity. When you contact Crimestoppers, phone numbers are scrambled and IP addresses cannot be traced so the handlers can never identify the source of the information. “Everything is designed within an inch of its life to be anonymous,” she says. “I have had interactions with, you know, counter terrorist policing saying this is national security. You will give me that person's number. But I don't have it. Network providers don't have it. And then, if you don't mind, let me just take a second to say that you probably have this piece of intelligence because we can't get that. “Whatever reason any agency needs that source detail, we genuinely cannot get it.” The model was once confined to reports from adults, but it is now playing a growing role in the fight against knife and youth crime through their youth service Fearless. Recent research showed that only 31 per cent of 16 to 25-year-olds would be very likely to tell the police that someone is carrying a knife, but this increased to 51 per cent if the reporting was anonymous. Youth reporting is a key area of growth, Mr Hallas says, adding: “We all know, you know, young people that kind of issue about we don't we don't snitch, we don't want to dob our friends in, and I think you've got to turn the narrative on its head. “And it's not about those things. It's about protecting your community. It's about preventing something potentially very serious taking place.” Callers are also increasingly turning to the charity to raise the alarm about hidden harms, with huge increases for reports about issues such as domestic abuse, child neglect, female genital mutilation and modern slavery. “More often than not, it's somebody maybe one step removed,” Mr Hallas explains. “So it's the sister or or the coworker or a neighbour or a friend who sees something happening, whether coercive control, whatever it might be.”