Brazos County Crime Stoppers finishes its review of 40 cold cases revisited during the last 40 days as part of the organization’s 40th anniversary.
Crime Stoppers coordinator and Brazos County sheriff’s deputy Rob Santasiero says 25 cases were closed by tips and other sources.
During the 40 day period, Crime Stoppers received 44 tips, College Station ISD received 48 tips, and Bryan ISD 67 tips.
With retired sheriff and Crime Stoppers coordinator Chris Kirk in attendance, the organization announced there will be a new legacy award in Kirk’s name presented annually.
Click below for comments from Brazos County Crime Stoppers board member Michael Kuitu, Brazos County sheriff Wayne Dicky, Rob Santasiero, and Chris Kirk:
News release from Brazos County Crime Stoppers:
Thank you to all our media partners, law enforcement partners, but especially our community for all your support during this event. It is a tremendous honor to work with you, and an obligation to our community to do our best every day.
Thank you to those outlets and representatives that were able to attend our press conference this morning. For those who were unable, please feel free to contact me for details. Bottom line, this has been more successful than we could have hoped for. We didn’t close the very old cold cases, but every tip was followed up by multiple law enforcement agencies, and any new information is welcome. While the tip quantity didn’t increase greatly, the quality of the information received did. In many cases, information was actionable and either led to an arrest, or in many cases furthering an investigation towards a later arrest.
A total of 44 tips were received by Brazos County Crimestoppers. Some tips were based off Crimestoppers press releases but called in to law enforcement directly.
Two were cleared by arrest, three cleared by arrest but not specifically tip related, three provided additional confirmation to information that we already had. In total 25 of these tips were cleared overall, including a fugitive apprehension yesterday just hours after we ran the press release. Thank you to our community and media partners and to our fellow law enforcement agencies for helping us make that happen.
We also discussed “pattern crimes” that we see often, especially around the holidays. Burglaries, burglaries of vehicles, fraud, and others are common but there are simple things you can do to keep safe. A number of tips are embedded in the below YouTube link, and run on law enforcement media pages commonly as the “9PM Routine”. These are simple things that make the criminal’s job much more difficult, and go a long way to keeping you and your family safe.
The last, and arguably the most notable moment of this morning’s press conference, was the announcement of the Sheriff Christopher C. Kirk Legacy Award, which will be presented annually by Brazos County Crimestoppers. We want to honor the legacy of service above self, and commitment to keeping our community safe that Sheriff Kirk instilled in us during his tenure, by recognizing one individual in our community annually who strives to live up to that legacy. And we have asked Kirk if he would help us in selecting the appropriate first recipient.
All the cases that are still active from the past 40 days can be found here https://youtu.be/w_DKIGCRjZQ on our YouTube channel. We will also run on our homepage at www.brazoscountycrimestoppers.org for the next month or so, and will later be archived on our Open Cases tab. It will also be pinned to the top of our Facebook page. Please feel free to run this on your social media as well, and regardless of how long it takes Crimestoppers Won’t Forget and we’ll continue to bring closure and justice to victims and their families.