New artwork will soon grace the halls of all schools in Iberia Parish. 

Hannah Prince, a junior at New Iberia Senior High School, has won the Iberia Parish Crime Stopper’s parishwide art contest for her poster design promoting the organization’s Campus Crime Stoppers initiative. 

The posters will be displayed at all public and parochial schools throughout Iberia Parish, said Mike Barras, board member of the Iberia Crime Stoppers. 

“We picked up all the contestants from all of the schools on Wednesday, and we displayed them and had the board vote on them. It was a hard decision,” said Barras, “but Hannah Prince won when the votes were counted.” 

He said in all, between 30 and 35 poster designs were entered.

The winner was announced on Friday, and on Monday morning, Prince was presented with a $250 check from the Iberia Crime Stoppers. Her design features a police badge with an eye in the middle, with handcuffs extending from each side of the badge. In large block lettering, the name Iberia Crime Stoppers and the phone number create a border for the image. 

“I just pieced each individual thing together,” Prince said. “That’s kind of how all of my art works.” 

Prince said she plans to give the money to her mother. 

The idea for the student art contest came from Iberia Crime Stopper board members, said Barras. 

“We thought, rather than apply adult thinking and adult printing, we wanted to know what the students are thinking, so we got with Ray Simon and Dale Henderson to do it,” he said. 

Simon is the principal at Catholic High School and Henderson is the Iberia Parish Schools superintendent.

Prince said her art teacher, Troy Leleux, explained the contest to the class, then had them work on the posters during class time. 

“He said it needed to encourage people to call, to know ‘if you see something, say something,’ ” she said. 

“I’d say that was a very productive class,” NISH Principal Curt Landry said. 

Landry said the school always has had a resource officer at the school who has provided a relationship between students and local law enforcement, but this year there has been a push to strengthen those relationships.

“We’ve always let them know to come report what they see,” Landry said, “but there’s been a big effort, especially this year, to educate students: if you see something, say something.” 

Barras also is promoting the Crime Stopper’s new P3 program, which is a computer-based, digital platform for sharing anonymous tips with police. The program includes a cell phone app created by Anderson Software for Crime Stopper initiatives across the country. He said that will be promoted with the Campus Crime Stopper initiative. 

The Iberia Crime Stoppers is a program that gives residents an opportunity to submit crime tips anonymously; users can submit by phone or through the website — and, soon, through the new phone app — while their personal information is anonymized and withheld from police. Tips that lead to an arrest can earn submitters up to $1,000, which they can claim via an anonymized number they are given.

Barras said he hopes to have the phone app launched no later than Nov. 6.