On a Saturday night two years ago, a 17-year-old girl tried to get into a Denver bar with a fake driver’s license.
In line with other would-be patrons outside the Lower Downtown spot, she claimed to be a 25-year-old woman named Shaelene. But the bouncer wasn’t buying it. He kept the girl’s fake ID and told her she wasn’t getting in.
As the girl walked away, she pulled a gun from her jacket and fired back at the crowd outside the bar. Five people were shot; they all survived. Surveillance footage showed the girl’s face as she waited in line, and captured her pulling out the gun and firing.
But Denver police still needed to figure out who she was. They found the man she’d been in line with; he claimed they’d just met and that he’d been hoping for a one-night stand. Two days after the shooting, police put out a flyer with Metro Denver Crime Stoppers, a nonprofit organization that pays cash — typically up to $2,000 — for anonymous tips that lead to arrests.
Within a day, 10 separate tipsters named Keanna Rosenburgh as the shooter. They provided the police with her age, height and home address, according to an affidavit. Police detectives then matched Rosenburgh’s driver’s license photo to the surveillance footage. She was charged and ultimately pleaded guilty in the shooting.
The case is one of hundreds in which tips to Metro Denver Crime Stoppers helped lead authorities to culprits. The 49-year-old Crime Stoppers organization — founded in 1976 by an Albuquerque police detective and established in Denver in 1981 — has become a key tool for law enforcement across Colorado’s Front Range in an age of widespread surveillance.
“They’ve proven to be invaluable,” Denver police Cmdr. Matt Clark said.
In Denver in 2024, Crime Stoppers passed along 215 tips about fugitives, Clark said, and 555 tips related to Denver homicides and non-fatal shootings.
As a whole, the organization — which works with police departments across the metro area — took in 4,000 tips in 2024 and paid out $32,000 in rewards, said Jennifer Evans, co-president of the board. About 75% of the award money was connected to Denver cases, with $24,000 awarded across 47 cases, she said.
The tipline has become a “core investigative strategy” for Denver detectives, Clark said, enabling officers to quickly identify suspects from now nearly ubiquitous surveillance cameras. At least 50 arrests in 2024 were tied to Crime Stoppers tips, Evans said.
The anonymous tips are a starting point, and detectives often need to do significant follow-up investigation to corroborate the tips with evidence that is admissible in court, Clark said.
“We are simultaneously doing traditional investigative methods,” he said. “But having someone in the community who knows the person, sees the photo and says, ‘That’s my neighbor, my coworker, my family member’ — it creates a tremendous amount of efficiency, accountability for the offender, and justice for the victim.”
Over the last five years, Metro Denver Crime Stoppers has received 22,000 tips, awarded $250,000 in reward money and contributed to at least 470 arrests, Evans said.
Since 1981, Metro Denver Crime Stoppers has paid out nearly $1.4 million in awards — an average of about $32,000 per year — and its tips have led to more than 3,300 arrests, the organization says.
The organization raises funds through donations and its Shred-a-Thons, in which the group collects documents to be professionally shredded and accepts donations from people who stop by to dispose of those documents. The shredding companies will sometimes donate their services as well, Evans said.
Reward amounts vary. While the standard reward advertised is up to $2,000 per arrest, the nonprofit organization might break that money up among multiple tipsters, and the board also considers the value of the particular information provided when determining the reward amount, Evans said.
“It also matters if it is a sensitive crime, like crimes against a child, an animal, we will pay differently,” she said.
CrimeStoppers’ volunteer board, which is the sole entity that decides how reward money is paid out, includes seven community members who work in various industries, including security, finance, construction and education, as well a Denver police detective who acts as the liaison between the nonprofit and the police agency.
Evans declined to say how many tipsters collected award money in the Rosenburgh case, citing the need for tipsters’ anonymity.
Metro Denver Crime Stoppers credits its anonymous process for much of its effectiveness. Tipsters are paid if the information they provide leads to an arrest — not a conviction, like some other programs — and they stay anonymous throughout the process. Tipsters collect the award money by presenting unique codes at particular banks.
Not all of the reward money that is awarded is actually collected. In 2020, about 40% of reward money went unclaimed, according to an annual report.
“I’m not convinced it is the money that is motivating people to come forward,” Clark said. “I think it is the anonymity more that drives traffic to Crime Stoppers, and their credibility over the last four decades. …I generally feel people are doing it for the right reasons, and there is a collateral benefit where they will collect the reward.”
Crime Stoppers will offer higher rewards in cases when particular donors come forward. Often, the donors are family members who hope that more money will bring in quality tips, Evans said. Clark noted that the higher rewards can generate more media attention, which can reinvigorate a case.
It also gives grieving family members a concrete way to help with the investigation, he added.
“They feel helplessness, a lot of times, with a lack of resolution, answers, even with info coming from the police department, so this is a way of advocating for their loved one, a victim, a coworker, to say, ‘We want to help,’” Clark said.
Evans declined to share the largest reward paid by the agency, but offered rewards have topped hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The organization offered a $100,000 reward for information in the 2011 killing of Thad Tigges, and a $125,000 reward in the 2008 murder of Adams County prosecutor Sean May, both of which remain unsolved.
The Crime Stoppers’ process casts a wide net and an influx of tips can send investigators down the wrong path. In the LoDo bar shooting in Denver, the police detective also investigated five tips that wrongly identified different people as the shooter, according to Rosenburgh’s affidavit.
“For every helpful tip we receive, we get calls that have little or nothing to do with the case,” said David Snelling, a spokesman for the Arvada Police Department, who said the department uses Crime Stoppers several times a year.
The reward money has at times led to disputes. The organization promised a $100,000 for information in the 2005 killing of Denver police Detective Donald Young, then reduced the award to $50,000 and paid out to a handful of tipsters on the case — but not to the killer’s grandmother, who led her grandson into a store in Mexico where he was apprehended, because she did not give her information directly to Crime Stoppers.
In 2011, a man then in prison unsuccessfully sued in an attempt to collect the entire $100,000 reward in the killing of Broncos cornerback Darrent Williams after the man was awarded only a portion of the total amount for his role in the case.
And in 2014, a man who was wrongly accused of being a stalker sued both Crime Stoppers and Nancy Grace after a selfie of his was featured in a Crime Stoppers bulletin and on the national news show as the suspected stalker. That lawsuit was settled, court records show.
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