Today the founder of Facebook was named Time’s ‘person of year’, so I really shouldn’t be surprised to hear how much the internet and social media has been integrated into our everyday lives. This fact is also very clear with the news that the police department in Seattle, Washington is using a Twitter account to help recover stolen cars.
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Today the Seattle police department’s Twitter experiment yielded their first success. The Department hopes that the stolen care Twitter alerts will prompt followers to call 911 when they see a stolen vehicle, and that’s exactly what happened Tuesday.
According to the Seattletimes:
“At 7:23 p.m. Tuesday, the department’s 911 center received a telephone call from a woman who indicated that a previously tweeted stolen Honda Civic was in the 1900 block of Second Avenue Northwest. A patrol officer responded to the location and recovered the car and notified the owner.”
Of course this is not the first time that law enforcement offices have used the internet or new technology to solve or stop a crime. NBC coordinated with local police departments to create an entire show about catching would be sex criminals using online chat rooms. Their “To Catch a Predator” show developed an almost cult like audience. I am sure we will continue to see criminal justice and law enforcement agencies continue to add these tools to their arsenal.
Additional Links:
- http://twitter.com/#!/getyourcarback
- http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/theblotter/2013689312_stolen_car_recovered_through_s.html
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Catch_a_Predator
- http://articles.cnn.com/2009-03-13/tech/police.social.networking_1_twitter-and-facebook-twitter-user-departments?_s=PM:TECH