Ten fewer criminals are walking the streets of a south coast city thanks to its local daily’s ‘most wanted’ campaign.
The Southern Daily Echo resurrected its Crack-A-Crime-For-Christmas appeal in conjunction with Hampshire Constabulary for the fifth consecutive year.
Each day during December the mug shot and crime details of someone wanted by police in the Southampton area was placed behind an advent calendar window both in print and on dailyecho.co.uk.
As result of the publicity generated by the Newsquest title’s campaign, police netted ten criminals – a record for the initiative – who were all safely behind bars by the New Year.
Echo editor Ian Murray said: “Our readers have really got into the spirit of this campaign and this year we managed to take off the streets a number of suspects for crimes as diverse as robbery, burglary and serious assault.”
Tony Hill from Southampton Police added: “This was entirely down to the readers of the Daily Echo who gave us vital information needed to effect these arrests.”
The Daily Echo already runs weekly Crimestoppers features to help police track down suspects and plans to repeat the calendar-style campaign at Easter with a campaign based on cracking open eggs.
Police told the Evening Post that, as a result of the campaign, they were following several leads thrown up by calls from the public and had arrested one man who was subsequently eliminated from their enquiries.
Comments
Subbed Out (07/01/2010 14:33:32)
Well done the Twitcher.
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