Dear Jon: Will you remain anonymous making a crime tip?

Investigators say you can absolutely remain anonymous with the Salinas Police, but the question is a good one, especially with technology the way it is today.

When you call 775-4222, the crime tip line at Salinas police, the first thing you hear is this, “You have reached the Salinas police anonymous crime tip line. This call will remain confidential.”

Commander Vince Maiorana with the Salinas police says, “If we didn’t keep the trust of people who want to remain anonymous, we would never have anybody calling us.”

Maiorana leads the investigations unit at the Salinas police department. He says trust and community involvement is at the heart of solving homicides, shootings and many other crimes in the city.

“Community involvement and association with the police in regards to reporting crimes is crucial to solving some of these horrible crimes that we have here in town,” says Maiorana.

So this is really a question of trust and the Salinas police department. If you call the crime tip line, how can you really be assured that your identity is not going to show up on a computer screen, or a window on a phone or a police report?

Says Maiorana, “That’s the trust that the police and the community has to have with each other. If we have somebody who comes forward and provides their name and says ‘I want to remain confidential and anonymous’, we honor that.”

So if you have crime tip, call the Salinas police at 775-4222 or the National Crime Tip hotline 1-800-78-CRIME. Tell them you want to remain anonymous and they will honor that.

A rash of shootings earlier this year had Salinas police on high alert. There were several homicides including the homicide of 17 year old Cesar Gonzales. Maiorana said there where anonymous tips called in.

“And those cases were really solved by people coming up, some anonymously, and providing information that lead us in a direction that we didn’t go before. And it was that crucial small bit of information that allowed us to move in a different direction and solving the case.”

One number you don’t want to call for crime tips is 9-1-1. That’s just for emergencies and your contact information will display for the operator.

There are several ways to provide confidential crime tips, you can flag down an officer on the street and share a tip and ask to remain anonymous. Officers are trained to handle those confidential tips. You can also log onto the Salinas police website and provide an anonymous tip.

If you have a question for me, contact me by email at DearJon@KIONRightNow.com. I’m also on social media.