"It brings in big results for us," DeCaires said. "Kids want a safe place to go to school — a place without drugs, intimidation, bullies and graffiti."

Student CrimeStoppers, which encourages students to report crimes anonymously, started with five schools eight years ago and now has grown to 55 schools, both private and public. The school with the highest student participation is Mililani High.

Chelsea Akamine, 16, a Mililani 11th-grader, wrote a story about the program for the school newspaper, Trojan Times, in February.

"We get more tips than other schools and the majority of them are accurate. Other schools, a lot of their tips are false or malicious or whatever," Chelsea said. "Ours have led to many apprehensions."

She says students take pride in the school and support the program.

"There is a lot of graffiti in our stairwells and I've noticed like really quickly, by the end of the day, people are cleaning it up and it's been reported. Students are really taking initiative really quickly.

She says the program has made students more aware of problems the school faces. "A lot of the drug problem, it wasn't really evident to begin with. A lot of students didn't know we had a lot of drug problems. When it comes to theft and graffiti it has really helped."

Retired police detective Jimmy Kawakami, safety manager at Mililani High, runs the Student Crimestoppers program.

He said that from July 2003 to June 2004, Mililani High had 17 actions taken because of tips from the program. That could range from notifying parents to a suspension. Next closest, he said, was Moanalua High School with 10.

Across all O'ahu schools during that same time, 27 arrests were made and $18,300 worth of stolen property was recovered. Police closed 67 cases for offenses including drugs, burglaries, criminal property damage, weapons offenses, theft and stolen vehicles.

"I truly believe in the program," Kawakami said. And he preaches that to the students.

"I stress to them that their parents work hard and pay their taxes. When people steal from our school or damage our school, it affects all of us. Your parents' tax money goes to replacing or repairing any of this criminal situation. They realize that.

"The reason (students) care is the school administration does take a strong interest and immediate action upon receiving any tips from CrimeStoppers. That is why we are successful. It's not that we have a high rate of crime here. The students take an interest in helping," Kawakami said.

"We have good students that don't want problems on campus," said John Brummel, Mililani principal. "Now they have an easy outlet to report things that are going on that they don't like on our campus.

"They will report students they see selling something on campus they might think is illegal. We have very little of that because they know that other kids will report it and it will not be tolerated here."

At Kaiser High School, a tip to CrimeStoppers led to the arrest last year of a 15-year-old boy and a 14-year-old girl who were allegedly dealing marijuana. That was the second time a student was arrested at the school for drugs in 2004.

"If you see evil happening and you don't do anything about it, then you're a part of it," said Kaiser vice principal Anthony Gayer.

CrimeStoppers lets kids do the right thing without having to worry about their safety, he said.

"We have kids who say they know things, but won't tell us because of retaliation," Gayer said. "I give them the pencil with the CrimeStoppers number on it."