Crime Stoppers of Morgan Scott and Cass Counties is expanding the way the organization works to solve crimes in the three-county area.
After launching a new mobile app for smartphones in October, Crime Stoppers has ventured into the world of podcasting and has launched its very own.
According to an announcement today, the first episode is now available on platforms such as Spotify, Amazon Music, Podcast Addict, Podchaser, Pocket Casts, Deezer, Listen Notes, Player FM, and Podcast Index, with Apple Podcasts becoming available this weekend.
Pandora, iheartradio, and TuneIn are expected to be added within the next few weeks. Crime Stoppers Coordinator Loren Hamilton says a YouTube videocast of the episodes is also expected to be available by the end of August.
Hamilton says the podcast is an effort to reach a broader, and newer audience by the Morgan-Scott-Cass Crime Stoppers to increase tips to help crimes get solved in the local area.
“We really had planned to do a visual podcast, and I think our plan is to still do that. We’d like to go out to the locations where some of the actual crimes took place, and videotape segments from those locations. We know that our Facebook and website and Instagram pages have been very very successful and popular for us, but we also there is a segment of the population that isn’t on that and hopefully that’s the segment of the population that we are going to attract.”
The podcast is being hosted by WLDS/WEAI Radio’s very own Ben Cox. Hamilton says the hope is that this allows another avenue to reach people who may no longer live in the area, but have crucial information on an area crime. He says those crimes may not always be the most recent crime of the week and will include more detailed information.
“We are actually focusing on the cold cases. I mean, there will be recent cases too, but our main focus are cold cases that we’ve had up on social media and haven’t gotten the response we’d hoped to get. And that’s why we want to push those out to maybe a different audience. In the first episode, Ben elaborates on the crimes of the week more than what we originally did with the social media posts.”
Hamilton says Crime Stoppers saw a 26% increase in tips in the second quarter of 2021 after the launch of their mobile phone app. He says the podcasts will further detail the crimes and suspects hopefully leading to more tips and payouts of rewards for crimes solved.
You can download and listen to the first episode now on your favorite podcasting site or visit the podcast directly at