Good day all. One of the best tools for fighting crime has turned out to be Facebook and Twitter. In many cases, law enforcement officers don’t even need to apply for a warrant. You might be asking why they don’t need a warrant, doesn’t that violate the Constitution?
The simple answer is, no. You don’t need to apply for a warrant to gather incriminating evidence when the morons post pictures and videos of themselves committing their crimes or showing off their stolen loot. Here are a few details and commentary from the Guardian:
This week three men have been arrested in Sweden on suspicion of raping a woman in an apartment in Uppsala, about an hour north of Stockholm. It wasn’t difficult for the police to find the suspects because they broadcast the alleged assault on Facebook Live. Several viewers reported the footage and police swarmed the apartment to take the men into custody.
What the Guardian won’t mention, is that the criminals were Islamic “Refugees” admitted into Sweden. Since this is Sweden, they might just get a slap on the wrist, but that is something for another post. At least the criminals were nice enough to provide the prosecutors with evidence of their crime. Hopefully, it will be enough so that their victim won’t have to testify in court. (I do not know how this works in the Swedish judicial system)
Facebook Live allows anyone to broadcast a video directly from their smartphone to the social network. Despite a wide-reaching advertising campaign urging people to use the feature to share heartwarming life moments, it’s gained a reputation for much grittier subject matter: the torture of a young man with disabilities in Chicago; the musings of a spree killer being chased by police; child abuse and now gang rape.
There’s also been at least one video where a young girl hanged herself while broadcasting. As people saw it, they tried to reach Facebook and police to try and help her, but it was to late.
In each case the impulse to ‘go live’ was ferociously self-incriminating, providing neatly packaged pieces of evidence of crimes – or their aftermath – that may have otherwise gone unobserved and possibly unpunished. And yet, according to researchers, the practice of documenting one’s crimes is on the rise. So what drives this self-defeating behaviour?
I can answer that with one graphic.
“Stupidity comes to mind. You might as well go down to the police station and commit the crime in the lobby,” said Raymond Surette, professor of criminal justice at the University of Central Florida, who has studied the phenomenon.
Considering that the overwhelming majority of criminals are morons, cretins, fools and generally downright idiots, this makes perfect sense. And as to the good Professor’s remarks about just going town to the police station? Yeah, a fair number of these losers have done just that.
It’s not always that simple, however.
Sure it is!
Terrorists, political protesters and narcissistic criminals have long carried out crimes designed to further their agenda or demonstrate their own perceived cleverness, power or bravado.
With regards to the terrorists and political protesters, they need to publicize. It’s the whole point of what they’re doing. You can’t terrorize people if they don’t know they are being targeted in the first place. As to the narcissists, well, they aren’t right in the head to begin with.
What’s new is the access people have to tools, via the smartphone, that allow for the creation, publication and distribution of content at the touch of a button – through photos, tweets, status updates, videos and now live streaming. Facebook isn’t the only app that allows smartphone users to broadcast in realtime, but it’s the only one available to an audience of 1.79 billion users.
“Committing a crime for an audience has never been easier!” said Surette.
And if you are going to commit a crime, which I do not recommend, then please, broadcast it. It will make it so much easier for the police and prosecutors to lock you up and throw away the key.
“Social media is the new way of bragging for those who commit crimes to gain a sense of self-power or self-importance. The audience is larger now and, perhaps, more seductive to those who are committing antisocial acts to fill personal needs of self-aggrandizement,” said media psychologist Pamela Rutledge.
Media psychologist? Is that a real field? In any case, these losers putting themselves up on Facebook thinking that it shows how great they are actually shows just how stupid they are. Back in the 30’s, the United States had a number of very famous criminals. Bonnie and Clyde, Machinegun Kelly, Al Capone, Pretty boy Floyd. All of them were well known to police. In many cases they actually identified themselves during their crimes. Every single one of them ended up in prison or dead.
“Being drawn into a criminal case used to be a career killer. Now it seems that for a lot of younger celebrities a little bit of criminality can be a good transitional device for your career,” said Surette.
“It gives the message that criminality isn’t all that bad. The shame has been taking out of it and there’s no expectation of punishment or bad stuff happening.”
Yeah, about that.
“A lot of these people are shocked the police are showing up at their door.”
These days, if you watch movies with “Professional” criminals, you will see that one of the first things they do is ditch all forms of electronic communications and tracking devices. That means no cellphones, smartphones, tablets, GPS etc. They rely on things like pencil and paper, maps and avoiding anything that might have a camera in it.
Fortunately, there are very few real criminals who are that smart. Those that are, generally get away with it because they know enough to STAY OFFLINE AND KEEP THEIR MOUTHS SHUT, especially when they are tunneling into a bank vault over a long weekend. These punks can’t go without their Iphones and Androids for very long, and they really are to stupid to be allowed out without a keeper, or in some cases, allowed to live at all.
The police, while they hate crime, love criminals who post their activities online. Because it’s in public, they don’t have to waste time with a warrant to places like Facebook demanding access to the accounts. They don’t need it. They may request a warrant after the arrests, primarily to see if the “Evil Geniuses” might have done other things and not posted them. However, with idiots like today’s criminals, it’s almost to easy for the police. Keep it up morons. There’s plenty of room in the House with Many Doors.
Thatisall
~The Angry Webmaster~
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I can deal with half the population being under average intelligence, but damn do they have to keep lowering the average.