Text-a-Tip Handy Post Holiday Weekend

While you're out celebrating Fourth of July, it's always good to keep in mind that the Laredo Police Department is not just available for emergencies, but also available in case you'd like to report non-emergency criminal activity anonymously.

The Laredo Police Department's text-a-tip program allows for the people of Laredo to chime in with tips related to criminal activity.

Well 911 is the option for emergencies, but with people celebrating for the holiday, the text-a-tip program could come in handy if non-emergency situations develop in the wake of fourth of July celebrations.

The Fourth of July allows for people to celebrate their independence, but if someone decides to use that independence to take part in criminal action here in the gateway city The Laredo Police Department would like to know about it.

Laredo's 411 text-a-tip program provides the community an avenue for providing information related to non-emergency criminal wrong-doing.

"It's a very specialized module for people to utilize so they can give us their information completely anonymous and so they could be free of any fear of being identified and they can give us any information they want", said Joe Baeza.

And on this holiday, if you witness any Fourth of July celebrations turning into something questionable. Any amount of information could help the Laredo Police Department address it.

"People do give us a lot of insight. No matter how small it is, or how insignificant they think it might be, it might be the one thing that leads up to an arrest in one of our investigations", said Baeza.

To submit an anonymous tip, all you have to do is text the word Laredo followed by your tip to 8-4-7-4-1-1 or "Tip411."

Someone within the department will converse with you about the situation and people submitting tips can stop the texting at any time.

411 is no replacement for 911 and if it's emergency, the best course of action is to still call 9-1-1.

"We want to stress that the tip 411 module is not a replacement for 911. We obviously still recommend that everybody still call 911 and speak to a physical person actually, if there's an emergency", said Baeza.

Laredo text-a-tip isn't only available for Fourth of July, as it's been around since 2013 and can always be used to submit non-emergency tips to the Laredo Police Department.

Well people can always call 911 for emergencies and submit tips on the Laredo Police Department's social media, but the text-a-tip is best way to submit the tips anonymously.

Laredo's text-a-tip program gets about ten texts a week and the LPD says the program is very useful to the department.