Tipsters Cash In on the Fight Against Crime : Thousand Oaks: A special program rewards anonymous informants. They have helped solve 148 cases and have been paid $11,800 over 4 1/2 years.

A Thousand Oaks-based program that rewards anonymous informants for turning in drug dealers, armed robbers and rapists is paying off, according to the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department.

Fifty-two people have been arrested over the past 4 1/2 years thanks to the Ventura County Crime Stoppers. By offering a reward for anonymous tips, authorities believe that witnesses to unsolved crimes will come forward.

“People are often fearful of giving information,” said Sgt. Kitty Hoberg, program coordinator. “They’re afraid of retaliation, they’re afraid of the court system. They’re afraid of getting involved.”

Last July, the Sheriff’s Department captured and prosecuted a man on kidnaping and rape charges after an anonymous caller tipped police to his license plate. The caller received $400.

Another caller led deputies to two adolescent vandals who damaged doors and fixtures at Walnut Elementary School in Newbury Park last year. For that tip, the caller got $600.

Sheriff’s officials say that Thousand Oaks’ crime rate is low, and that it is one of the safest cities of its size in the nation.

Nevertheless, a crime analyst’s 1986 report that lawlessness would soar after the population reached 100,000 prompted Hoberg, a 23-year veteran who handles prevention, to help start a local chapter of the 15-year-old Crime Stoppers International Inc. program.

Since then, the local Crime Stoppers program has given 33 rewards totaling $11,800 and solved 148 cases, including 26 burglaries and 25 armed robberies. Nineteen of those arrests were on drug-related charges.

During the past year, Crime Stoppers has branched out into Moorpark and Fillmore. Law enforcement officials in Port Hueneme and Camarillo are also considering adopting the program, Hoberg said.

Crime Stoppers is a cooperative venture with local firms. Donations from business owners and service clubs underwrite the cost of napkins, matchbooks, balloons, cards, street signs and the newspaper ads that carry the Crime Stoppers number: 494-TALK.

Many of the 15 people on the program’s board of directors are business owners. They determine the size of the rewards and have the final word on doling out money.

Chairman Gib Poiry, district manager of GTE of California, acknowledged that the driving force behind some calls is greed.

“They want the money,” Poiry said. In one case a woman turned in her drug-dealer boyfriend.

“A member of the board asked her, ‘Why are you blowing the whistle on your boyfriend?’ ” Poiry said. “She said, ‘This was the only way I could get a $500 reward. I can always get a new boyfriend.’ ”

Others genuinely want to help police without being recognized for the tip, he said. Four informants have never picked up their rewards.

Some of the best tips come from callers who contact authorities upon their release from County Jail.

“These guys go to the phone and snitch on their cellmate,” said Dick Elliott, Crime Stoppers’ treasurer.

Unlike other reward programs such as Secret Witness and We Tip, Crime Stoppers gives rewards for information that leads to an arrest, even if there is no conviction.

But 97% of the suspects arrested through information obtained from Crime Stoppers have been convicted, Hoberg said. Only one case, a Malibu woman arrested on suspicion of killing a man in a hit-and-run accident in Los Angeles, was never prosecuted.

There is one case that authorities have tried for years to crack through paid informants: the slaying of Newbury Park resident Melanie Pape.

Pape, 28, was shot in a drive-by attack on the Moorpark Freeway on Jan. 30, 1988, as she drove home from a girlfriend’s house about 4 a.m.

Deputies found her green Porsche by the side of the road, the keys still in the ignition and the motor still running, Hoberg said. In recent weeks, Crime Stoppers has aired information on a cable television channel in hopes of finding the killer.

“We’d like to solve the case,” Hoberg said.