For weeks, the black-and-orange billboard loomed over I-94 in Detroit with an ambiguous and ominous one-word message: CRIME.
Today, the rest of the billboard's message is to be unveiled as the Detroit Police Department announces a new text-message tip campaign designed to let otherwise reluctant witnesses give the police information anonymously.
"I think it fits excellently with what many people love to do now — text," Chief Warren Evans said Tuesday. "People can pick up a cell phone and look like they're texting a buddy, when they're actually giving us valuable information in real time."
The police department bought two billboards along I-94 and I-75, as well as ads on or inside every Detroit Department of Transportation bus with the new message: "CRIME. See it. Text it."