Nashville cops throw the (Face)book at 'em...

[Zulu Cowboy]

I've been saying this for years...

Be careful what you post online.

Zulu Cowboy

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Nashville cops throw the (Face)book at 'em - LINK

Social media sites can lead to suspects, help convict them

Metro detective Dean Haney surveys about 400 photos hanging on a wall at the North Precinct, all taken from MySpace and Facebook profiles.

In the pictures, young men and women flash gang signs, some in groups, others alone. Some have machine guns, pistols, even an AK-47 assault rifle. Some are holding large amounts of cash. Some of the people in the pictures are now dead, the victims of homicide.

Metro police have started using social media sites such as MySpace, Facebook and YouTube as investigative tools, resources they say are becoming more and more useful in catching criminals and gathering evidence against them.

Haney, a 22-year police veteran, says the photo collection is just the tip of the iceberg. Thousands of photos like these sit in police computer files, he said.

"Not only does it refresh our memory having the pictures posted, but people who come in recognize certain people in those pictures and they give us information,'' Haney said.

The investigator spends anywhere from 30 minutes to more than two hours online surfing social media sites at least twice a week. Police say information they have pulled from the sites has helped with criminal investigations, but they would not give specifics since the practice is less than two years old and the cases are still pending in the judicial system.

Nashville criminal defense attorney David Raybin said police use social networking sites the same way they might have gone through a suspect's diary in the past.

"Unless they are actually hacking into a private system, there is no privacy issue," he said. "It's no different than if you stand in your living room with the windows open and shoot someone, and the police see it."

Facebook landed one of Raybin's clients in jail last year. The man was out on probation when he posted on the site that he had been to a party in another state. His probation officer saw it, and the man was locked up for violating his probation by leaving the state.

When he gets a new client, Raybin said, "the first thing I tell them is, 'You are shutting down your Facebook account today.' "

He said people mistakenly believe there is a degree of anonymity on the Internet. "In fact, it is very easy for the police to access that information,'' Raybin said.

Other cities use sites

Though the use of social media sites is relatively new in Nashville, other cities have been using them for years.

In January, police in Chattanooga discovered an online forum where local residents were planning illegal drag races, department spokeswoman Rebecca Royval said.

She said police also found online videos of drag races in progress on YouTube.

Using the online tips, she said, officers staked out an area where a drag race was expected to occur. Police said those involved accelerated to more than 100 mph, and four racers were ticketed after being caught in the act.

In December, Massachusetts authorities caught a man accused of child rape after learning about his whereabouts on Facebook, state police spokesman Dave Procopio said.

You can't hide online

Melissa Martin, a junior marketing major at Tennessee State University, says the public social networking sites are fair game.

"I figure if you're dumb enough to post something illegal on your page, then you should get caught," Martin said. "Those sites aren't private by any means, and if you're not careful you can incriminate yourself."

Martin said she has seen examples of it.

"I've seen pictures of my friends holding (alcoholic) drinks on their pages when they aren't 21 yet," she said. "That's a crime."

While useful to police, social media sites can also benefit people accused of crimes.

"I routinely run government witnesses through Facebook, Google and a number of other sites," Raybin said.

While defending a man charged with attempted murder last year, Raybin came across the Facebook page of a witness in his case. She had posted an account of the attack that differed from the account she gave police, he said.

Raybin produced a copy of the woman's Facebook statements in court to discredit her story.

In the end, Raybin said, his client's charge was reduced to aggravated assault.

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[Guest vovk82]

I have a friend in Philadelphia with a bit of background in this field of investigation. One problem he continually encountered was (attempting) to moniter criminals of interest from non-English speaking backgrounds; particularly Russians and other Eastern Europeans and various Hispanic immigrants. He claimed that many of these people register with social networking sites for their own country such as www.odnoklassniki.ru have their keyboards and computers formatted to their own language complete with Cyrillic character keys, etc. And the same for many Hispanic groups. These people are completely absent from the Anglo-sphere internet space. As he put it, "its pretty difficult to track someone who doesn't use a word of English in their personal life or even the same damn alphabet."

It's probably due to where I currently live (South Nashville near Antioch where brazen immigrant diaspora seems to outnumber American citizens), but this is the first thing I thought of while reading that article.

[Alpha7]

I knew a dude that I went to high school with was a child molester because I had seen it in the paper here. Well I was on facebook looking at the people in my area. He was one that came up. I alerted facebook he was a pedophile and sent them a link showing the information off the tn sex offender registry site. The guy in the photo on the tn sex offender registry was the same guy as in the facebook photos. They shut him down that day and reported him to "the proper authorities"