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Students at the University of Cincinnati have teamed up to create the Cincy Crime Stoppers Instagram page to alert students to incidents on campus.
A description from Cincy Crime Stoppers says the page is for “Bearcats who live off campus and have been victims of crime” to “submit anonymous tips to help keep” the “community safe.”
“We are a group of students… who have been victims of different things while we were students at UC,” said Hailey Smith, a third-year criminal justice student and representative of the page. “We realized that some kind of outlet was needed to make students more aware of what’s going on on campus.”
Smith added that the students who created the page, who have been victims of a variety of crimes, from armed robberies to break-ins, felt the need for more alerts about crimes near campus. Cincy Crime Stoppers aims to do this by sending real-time alerts to its followers.
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“Cars on our street get broken into at least a couple times a month,” Smith said.
The UC junior is passionate about crime prevention and reduction and hopes the Cincy Crime Stoppers page will have a positive impact on the community, even on a small scale. She and other students feel the university can be “lazy” in crime alerts sent to students.
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Cincy Crime Stoppers aims to not only give students more information about crime near campus, but also help authorities get more tips..
“We want to get confirmed information before we send it, of course, and we also want to publish… the most important things, but also those things that… are not reported by the UC,” he said.
Most recently, students are mourning the death of Benjamin Addison, a 21-year-old UC student who was fatally shot in the early morning hours of March 30 while trying to stop a carjacking. Police named a 17-year-old suspect in connection with Addison’s death.
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Addison’s father said in a Facebook post that two people were trying to break into the 21-year-old’s Hyundai. Prosecutors are asking that the teen suspect’s case be transferred to adult court as the suspect’s attorney pushes for his release, according to FOX 19 Cincinnati.
“He was the light of my life and truly my best friend. He was such a wonderful young man and (I don’t) know if I will ever get over this pain. Please pray for me and my family,” Joe Addison wrote. .
UC has not released any type of public statement acknowledging Addison’s death, and Smith said students feel as if they have been left in the dark. The university did not immediately respond to an inquiry from Fox News Digital.
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“The school hasn’t sent anything… Cincy Crime Stoppers is outraged. Parents are outraged. I know students are outraged,” Smith said, adding that hundreds of students shared the post after Cincy Crime Stoppers shared the news .
Addison majored in finance and IT at UC’s Lindner College of Business.
“Benjamin didn’t know any strangers, he was kind to everyone, he smiled constantly, and he was gentle and funny. He enjoyed collecting game cards, including Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh! He loved the Cincinnati Bengals and working out. Most of all, “Benjamin loved spending time with his family and friends,” an obituary for Addison reads.
Two days before Addison’s death, a double shooting near the UC campus left a 21-year-old man dead and a 16-year-old male victim injured after a party on the night of March 28.
While overall violent crime has declined since the pandemic, teen shootings and vehicle thefts hit record highs in the city last year since at least 2008, when the city began keeping shooting logs online, FOX reported 19.
In 2023, Cincinnati recorded 55 shooting victims between the ages of 13 and 15. The city also experienced a record number of vehicle thefts, with 1,511 Kias and Hyundais stolen between January and July last year.
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