Connecting citizens to what they need

The Sampson County Sheriff’s Office has paved the way for residents to have easier access to reporting through a website designed to give the community a safe and secure way to contact law enforcement on crimes happening around the county.

Citizens Connect is a website offering citizens the ability to do everything from leaving anonymous tips to reporting stolen property and beyond. Sheriff’s officials said they just want the community to know the site exists and encourage its use.

“The biggest thing we’re trying to promote with Citizens Connect is that we want to get the word out that it’s available and we want people to access it,” Detective Baley Bertolani said. “Another of the biggest draws that we want to promote is the tip line because you can submit a completely anonymous tip through the site. We have no idea where it comes from; if you don’t want us to know your name, we won’t know it. We’re just trying to get the news about the site out there.”

Leaving anonymous tips isn’t the only function of Citizen Connect, which Bertolani further highlighted.

“You can do many other things on there,” he said. “For example, if you create an account, which is free, you can register your personal property — say like a TV, a firearm, something that is of high value — you can put it on Citizen Connect. Then, let’s say if, unfortunately it gets stolen, a user can go back and see all their property in one spot, with all of their serial numbers and everything of that nature.

“That information, of course, is shared with us and we can see it so then if it comes up stolen, we can actually look and see that it belongs to said person or persons.”

Bertolani also noted that a frequently asked questions tab was added to the site, listing answers to many common questions received daily.

“Basically it’s for questions we get calls about or asked 10 times a day,” said Bertolani. “So we put them on there and the answers to them with it, which you can go online and find.”

According to Bertolani, Citizens Connect isn’t a new website; the Sheriff’s Office has had it in use for just about a year.

“We’ve recently been able to get it up and running to a point that we can actually use it,” he stated. “It’s provided from Southern Software, who does pretty much all of our systems. It’s something that they included for us and we’ve taken it and ran with it. And now we’re able to actually use it for the public.”

Something he stressed about Citizens Connect is that it’s not intended to be used for emergency issues that require calling 911.

“I know we’ve started to pass out little business cards that have a QR code that goes to the site and we’re urging people to sign up for it and to use it,” he said. “That said, obviously, it’s not for emergency situations. If you would want to submit a tip about something that happened or to share information about something, that’s its intended purpose. But if it’s an emergency, call 911.

Bertolani said the easiest way to reach Citizens Connect is to visit sampsonsheriff.com and click the section marked “Sheriff’s Citizens Connect.” Detailed information is there, along with past press releases, though updating that is a work in progress, Bertolani noted.

“I think Citizens Connect is important because it creates a way that the sheriff can really pass what he knows on to the public,” Bertolani said. “It kind of opens up a line of communication between somebody who may not want to get involved in an investigation, but they know something. We can now act on that without them having to get involved or putting themselves at risk.

“It’s for those that know who did something, but they don’t want to come forward because they’re scared. They now have a way to tell us, ‘hey, this happened’ and then we’ll just run with it from there,” he continued. “I think that’s the biggest push of the sheriff right now — trying to get a way that we can talk to the public and the public can talk to us in the easiest way that he can. Using something like this has definitely been a gamechanger. We’ve had a few tips submitted that we’ve been able to act on and it’s just been great.”