Calling all Somalis! You don’t have to be a Somali refugee living in Columbus, OH to report a crime in your own language. Although set up in Columbus, supposedly the second largest Somali population in the country (behind Minneapolis), the crime hotline is available to anyone acccording to the Associated Press:
COLUMBUS, Ohio — U.S. law enforcement agencies, community leaders and an anti-crime group announced a new Web site Wednesday that allows Somali immigrants to report crimes in their native language.
The project’s goal is to help Somalis overcome a suspicion of police borne of corruption in their homeland and to crack down on illegal activity from street crime to terrorist recruiting. The site was announced in Columbus, the city with the nation’s second-largest Somali population, but will accept tips from anywhere in the U.S.
Somali concerns about crime have grown in Columbus recently and reached new levels following the unrelated slayings of two Somali immigrants in the last year.
Somalis are also worried about the recruiting of young men by overseas terrorists. More than a dozen people have been charged in an ongoing federal investigation in Minnesota into the travels of as many as 20 young men who went to Somalia to fight.
Looking for their first tip—a Somali sex offender!
I saw that first AP story a couple of days ago, but now here is a second one this time from the Columbus Dispatch:
A Somali man who failed to register as a sex offender in Minnesota might have fled to Columbus, federal investigators said yesterday.
The search for Yahye Elmi Abdisalan, convicted of felony sex crimes against children, coincides with the launch of a Web site designed to allow Somalis throughout the United States to submit anonymous tips to law enforcement in their native language.
Central Ohio Crime Stoppers created the site, www.somalitips.com, in cooperation with the FBI, the U.S. Marshals Service and the Somali community.
The wanted poster for Abdisalan, 32, should be posted on the site this week, Cathy Jones, interim U.S. marshal for the Southern District of Ohio, said during a news conference promoting the site.
For new readers, more Somalis are on the way:
Maybe the tips hotline will turn up some of the 270 Somali illegal aliens who entered the US recently through Mexico and are being sought by ICE. The fear is that they are connected to the terrorist group, Al-Shabaab here.
For information on Somali missing youths, American citizens who have gone to Somalia to learn the Jihad trade, some leaving through Mexico, use those search words. We have written dozens of stories on the case. For more on Al-shabaab (sometimes spelled Al-shabab) also use our search function.
The US State Department has admitted over 80,000 Somali refugees to the US (this linked post continues to be one of the most widely read posts we have ever written) in the last 25 years and then in 2008 had to suspend family reunification because widespread immigration fraud was revealed through DNA testing. That specific program has not yet been reopened (that we know of), but will be soon.
Nevertheless, thousands of Somali Muslims continue to be resettled by the State Department as I write this. We recently learned that we will be taking 6000 Somalis this year from one camp in Uganda and as many as 11,000-13,000 total from around the world.