Do Shawano Police Dept Ask For Money Donations Through Phone Calls

Pete Ryan

En español

"I'm calling on behalf of the National Save the Police Fund,"* the vocalisation on the phone told me. "We support police force officers who risk their lives daily protecting our communities. Can the police officers count on yous?"

Gotten calls like this? And so accept we all. At the end of 2021, robocalls raising coin for constabulary groups were the highest-book phone messages in almost major U.S. markets, according to Nomorobo, a robocall-blocking company that works with AARP on fraud prevention.

These callers typically use language that suggests they are charities raising coin directly for local police. But what's the truth.

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The answer is that, in many cases, these aren't charities at all. Instead, they're "independent, expenditure-​only" political action committees, or super PACs. Why does this matter? Unproblematic: less scrutiny. Charities face relatively rigorous review from the Internal Revenue Service, and most states crave them to register earlier they can operate there.

Super PACs generally have far fewer country-level reporting requirements and are regulated by the Federal Election Committee (FEC), which has fewer enforcement options than the IRS. The effect: a rise in super PACs that utilize sympathetic-sounding causes primarily to line their own pockets (the FEC has called this subset "scam PACs").

I recently took about a dozen of these "police-back up" calls to hear the pitches. The first thing I noticed was that I wasn't talking to live people; the answers all sounded scripted and recorded. In fact, former employees of these types of fundraisers have testified nearly how they used soundboard technology to play prerecorded messages as responses, in role so they could talk to several donors at once.

On each phone call, my questions about how donations got spent mostly went unanswered. But i replied straight: 90 percentage went to fundraising, and 10 percent went to police support. Wow! That means of a $35 donation, no more than than $3.50 goes to their stated cause.

To find out more than virtually these organizations, I probed the FEC website, where super PACs written report their activity. I quickly identified over 70 super PACs with "police force" or "law enforcement" in their names. I looked up i called Law Enforcement for a Safer America PAC, which seemed to be particularly active, based on Nomorobo's monitoring. It was raising money using 4 unlike police-oriented names (one "association," two "coalitions" and i "back up fund"). In the first half of 2021, this system reported donations of $iv.3 million; expenditures were just under $4.two million, the bulk of this going to overhead — fundraising, lawyers, lead lists and and so on. I plant a few small line items labeled "legislative services," simply none that appeared to go directly to supporting police.

Some other useful fact: Organizations that file reports with the FEC have to list a treasurer. This particular super PAC'southward treasurer is a former cop who was arrested for stealing $50,000 from the police force marriage for which he served as president. The case has not yet been resolved.

Are the money-gathering techniques these "scam PACs" use illegal? Sadly, it comes down to their choice of words during a pitch; it's unlawful to misrepresent how the coin will be spent. But as I learned, these callers are masters at evading any such disclosure.

Now, the terminal matter I want to do is discourage you lot from giving to causes you care nigh, like supporting police. Below are a few tips for screening for legitimate charities. Simply these telemarketers bombarding our phone lines? Just hang up. Police enforcement has a tough enough task without having to put upward with charlatans masquerading as heroes.

*Name fictionalized for legal reasons

Source: https://www.aarp.org/money/scams-fraud/info-2022/police-charity-scam.html

Posted by: jacquesowelp1978.blogspot.com

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