Students Can Earn Cash for Tipping Off Cops

If you see something, say something.

That’s the message Whitefish Bay police are sending to high school and middle school students with a new program that offers a quick $50 in exchange for information about drugs, alcohol or weapons in the schools.

The Quick 50 program offers $50 to students who anonymously provide information that leads to a ticket or an arrest for possession of drugs, drug paraphernalia, alcohol or weapons on school grounds. The program in Whitefish Bay is funded through the Whitefish Bay Police Department.

Whitefish Bay school resource officer David Hryniewicki said the program kicks off at Whitefish Bay Middle School and the high school Feb. 25, and he said the program could be expanded to other schools, such as Dominican High School, in the future.

, and Hryniewicki said he talked with Nicolet High School police liaison officer Kelly DeJonge, of the Glendale Police Department, to create the program.

Under the Quick 50 program, students can provide information about alcohol, drugs or weapons to a guidance counselor, a principal or assistant principal or Hryniewicki himself. When they do, they will be asked to provide details about what they know. At no point does the student’s name get written down, so students do not have to worry about their name getting in a police report, he said.

“The important thing for the kids is the anonymity of it,” he said.

Hryniewicki said the program yields quicker and more reliable information about issues in school than the North Shore Crime Stoppers program, which is one way the police department currently gets tips.

With Crime Stoppers, tips usually have limited information and little is known about the reliability of the source. When guidance counselors, for example, are gathering information from students, they are able to not only gauge the reliability of a tip, but also obtain as much information as possible by asking follow-up questions. Guidance counselors are also able to quickly pass on the information to police. Since the high school has an open campus, a quick response time is necessary.

“A counselor can help us get what we need to help us quickly act on it before something happens in the schools,” he said.

Police departments and schools across the state have been looking at the program since the Greater Beloit Area Crime Stoppers funded the program in 1993. Hryniewicki said the program has since had positive results in school districts across the state.

“Maybe we get two tips, maybe we get 20, but anything will be seen as a success by us,” he said.

He said the idea of a Quick 50 program has been around for several years and is not motivated by any recent activity at the schools.

“I don’t think there’s this huge uptick in drugs in our schools, especially since we’ve been in the schools more," he said. “That said, there is still some stuff in the schools now and again. It’s just a matter of getting kids to come forward who ordinarily wouldn’t. If a little bit of money helps, that’s fine.

“In the end, it’s another tool we can use to preserve a safe learning environment.”