Tattling for Cash

"The program is designed to bust kids in places like the locker rooms, where security cameras aren't allowed, but all the students know what’s happening."

By Natalie Streiter

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Teens might be great at keeping secrets, but what happens when they are PAID to tattle on friends? Do they cave to the temptation of instant cash, which makes their coffee shop paychecks look like a joke? Some schools across the country, from New Mexico to Florida, are having great success with crime stopper programs paying anywhere from five dollars to a thousand dollars for exposing classmates' crimes from dealing drugs to vandalism. These programs boast hundreds of tips and cases solved. Youth Radio’s Natalie Streiter brings the story of young people in Georgia where tattling for money is paying off in some schools, and sparking curiosity in others where the program doesn’t exist.

Suburban Kell High School in Marietta, Georgia, about an hour from downtown Atlanta, is gleaming and new, nothing like my inner city school. But that doesn’t stop kids from getting into trouble – some of them get caught with drugs and weapons. Former campus cop Dan Knowles and student Elliot Mitchell are happy to give a tour of all the school hot spots.

OFFICER KNOWLES (on tape)
Ready for a boys locker room?

NATALIE
Yes I am.

OFFICER KNOWLES (on tape)
Hello! Last chance...This locker room in general has a lot of turns and hides in it...Everybody changes clothes here. But even if you had a faculty member here, there’s hidden corners.

NATALIE
Officer Knowles is the father of a program here – paying kids for tips that lead to arrests. It’s not a new idea – there are Student Crime Stopper programs paying cash rewards in many states. Some have been around for decades. They’re all different, but many of them use tip hotlines for getting info.

At Kell High School, there are signs posted all over campus with the breakdown of cash rewards from 10 to 100 dollars and an e-mail address for passing information. The school shells out a hundred dollars for firearms or serious felony charges, 50 for felony drug charges, and 25 for misdemeanor drug charges.

The program is designed to bust kids in places like the locker rooms, where security cameras aren't allowed, but all the students know what’s happening – just ask Elliot.

ELLIOT (on tape)
Lots of kids smoke and drink in here because once the class goes to weight training or whatever class they have, they just stay after and stay in here and coaches don’t always check and kids go in the corner and do whatever. You can smell marijuana.

NATALIE
Paying students who come forward wasn’t the original plan for fighting crime at Kell High School. Officer Knowles had other ideas, like free food coupons in the cafeteria or preferred parking. But it’s not like no one would notice people getting special treatment.

So they decided on cash to avoid a paper trail and keep things anonymous. Checks made out to the proper department are cashed and delivered to the student, sometimes off school grounds. But how anonymous can the program be when there’s high school gossip to worry about? Not very, says Elliot who has never turned anyone in and doesn’t know if he ever would, unless his life was in danger.

ELLIOT (on tape)
Like, last semester a kid got turned in for a gun. But kids aren’t going to turn in someone for drugs because that would be like half our school.

NATALIE
Does it stay very confidential when kids turn in other kids?

ELLIOT (on tape)
For a while, but then friends tell other friends who told and it starts getting around and then soon everybody knows who told.

OFFICER KNOWLES (on tape)
But do you know of anyone that was actually pointed out that everybody knows that this person turned this person in for the money and that’s who we all should not be talking to right now because they snitched?

NATALIE
Elliot is silent. He can’t come up with any names of snitches. But everyone agrees they exist and they are talking, and Officer Knowles says that’s got people looking over their shoulders, wondering “would my buddy turn me in?” and deciding to leave their weapons and drugs at home. The result? A drop in arrests in half from 80 to 40 since the program started 2 years ago.

All that improvement, accompanied by a bill totaled at 600 dollars.

OFFICER KNOWLES (on tape)
Out of that 600 dollars came a gun, five weapons cases involving knives, one drug sale case which is a felony drug case, and then three misdemeanor drug cases which is marijuana possession. So you got one gun, five knives, one drug dealer and three drug users for 600 dollars.

NATALIE
Officer Knowles thinks the cash is worth the investment. So does teacher Spencer Herron who had a student give a tip after an incident in his classroom.

SPENCER (on tape)
Another student was offering them drugs to buy and he said no, and the kid said, “Why don’t you just take it anyway?” and the kid said no and went and told the principal and the kid was suspended for the rest of the school year.

NATALIE
Officer Knowles has gone on to start programs in eight other Georgia schools in a neighboring county. He’s getting calls from school districts across the state wanting to start their own programs. But this kind of thing doesn’t exist at my school in Atlanta. I’m not sure paying for tips would work in the inner city.

Hanging at a shopping center back in Atlanta with my friend Anne Marie Drolet, I’m convinced this program would be a joke at my school. Anne Marie thinks I’m totally wrong.

ANNE MARIE (on tape)
People would be tempted by the money, so they would turn people in.

NATALIE
How much would you want to get paid to turn in another student for drugs?

ANNE MARIE (on tape)
Hmm…Let’s see. I don’t know. Probably like at least 20 bucks for each name.

NATALIE
So how much would you want if you turned in someone who had a gun and they brought it to school.

ANNE MARIE (on tape)
I’d want 500 dollars. Definitely. Or more…

NATALIE
Anne Marie doesn’t have a job, so the extra cash earned by snitching might help her. She says she’d even turn in her friends. But my friend Lilly Morgan who works at Cold Stone Ice Cream Shop would rather work for her money than turn someone in. She considers the prices at Kell High School fair, but...

LILLY MORGAN (on tape)
I think it’s kind of weird that they are paying them though. It’s kind of like bribery basically.

NATALIE
People who think the program works well say that some people would turn in their own mother for 100 dollars. What do you think about that?

LILLY (on tape)
I think it’s pretty wrong to turn in your mother just for some money.

NATALIE
Although Lilly doesn't like the idea of turning in peers for cash, she agrees with Anne Marie that it would probably work on our campus because kids want money. Whether our school could afford it is another issue. At Kell High School, the funds come out of profit from vending machines, but public schools in the city could probably use that money for better things – like books and supplies.

Officer Knowles says any incentive to snitch - like getting days off of school - might produce results. Now THAT could work considering a lot of students at my school would much rather be somewhere else.

But whether our parents would approve is another story.