Police turning to social media to find suspects & witnesses.
Police investigators in Cincinnati stumbled upon an online video last year showing an act of armed robbery, helpfully taped by the perpetrators themselves.
The analysts at the city's Real Time Crime Center found the footage on a Facebook page while using the popular social-media site to investigate another crime. The suspects were eventually arrested.
"We were looking at friends and friends of friends of the suspects (in the other case), and we just happened to run across it," says Lt. Lisa Thomas, who heads the center that was founded two years ago to monitor the Internet and the cameras installed across the city. "You have guys who are bragging about their crimes online."
With more netizens flaunting their actions and thoughts in the open, social media has become a mainstay in police work. Police departments and federal agencies are aggressively seeking information from social-media companies, beefing up their budgets and providing training to dig for online clues left by criminals and victims in targeted investigations.
They can and do routinely order social-media companies to shut down a Twitter or Facebook page, for example, immediately after a crime has been committed or have relevant information archived before any changes can be made. "It's no different than physical evidence," says Bob Hopper, manager of the Computer Crimes section at the National White Collar Crime Center.http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/story/2012-03-18/social-media-law-enforcement/53614910/1