UNSOCIAL MEDIA: Law enforcement weigh benefits and drawbacks of social media

IDAHO FALLS — Navigating the web for accurate information can be difficult, social media being the biggest obstacle.

Facebook and Twitter can be excellent sources of mass information. But pinning down the truth in all that noise can be extremely difficult, especially for law enforcement in an active investigation.

If the facts look solid, a lead that emerges through social media can be appealing. But hours spent verifying, contacting and looking into a lead that came from a social media post rarely concludes with an arrest, authorities said.

Law enforcement has a tenuous relationship with social media. It can help in getting word out about missing teens, or a robbery suspect. But it can also be a mud-slinging arena where accusations fly and progress is hindered.

A November 2014 report conducted by LexisNexis found that of the law enforcement who responded to the online study, 81 percent actively used social media to facilitate investigations. More than half of the responding federal, state and local agencies did not have a policy for use of social media. Only about half of the agencies used Twitter, and 93 percent used Facebook.

Social media as a tool

Cops can use Facebook and Twitter to seek information, but separating the wheat from the chaff is difficult.

Posting a screen grab of a suspected robber can bring in a lot of information. Many commenters will say they know the person or have seen them. Weeding through the posts to find solid leads can be almost as difficult as conducting regular investigations.

Idaho Falls Police Department Capt. Darren Cook said the department utilizes Facebook if it needs to find someone or needs help from the public.

“It does elicit the public to come forward, but it can spin up some erroneous information,” Cook said.

Cook said it’s very difficult to flesh out information gleaned from Facebook and much of it is unsubstantiated.

Filtering out the negative

Finding the right balance between help and hindrance by using social media has proven difficult, especially for smaller departments such as the Lemhi County Sheriff’s Office.
Sheriff Lynn Bowerman has 30 employees. When 2-year-old DeOrr Kunz, went missing in July in the Salmon-Challis National Forest, his office was pushed to the limit. His staff was overwhelmed, partially by their efforts to search, and almost equally by their attempts to quell the social media tips and comments that flooded in.

Simultaneously trying to maintain a coordinated search of the Timber Creek campground, where DeOrr went missing, as well as chasing leads coming from as far as Minnesota, proved difficult.

“Getting people involved to help look, if they’re the right type of people, it’s fantastic,” Bowerman said. “But then there’s people who their whole life is social media, and they’ll twist the things you say. It creates a bigger frenzy than it is; it’s really a struggle.”

Two Facebook pages have been set up in an effort to find DeOrr. One of the pages, Help Find DeOrr Kunz, has garnered responses from people in Alberta, Canada, Minnesota, South Dakota, California, Kansas, North Carolina and Spokane, Wash. Many voiced outrage that an Amber alert was never issued, even though Amber alerts are usually utilized in kidnappings. There is no evidence DeOrr was taken.

“I think it’s disgusting that they won’t issue an amber alert,” wrote Amy Dunkley, of the United Kingdom, July 15.

There have also been a couple GoFundMe pages set up to fund search efforts for DeOrr. One fundraising page was set up to fund the family for taking off work to search for their son.

A separate GoFundMe page is seeking funds to hire a search dog team to look for the child in October.

A false tip posted Sept. 13 of a child who looked similar to DeOrr led to a round of viral sharing on Facebook. That child was later reunited with his mother in Stanton, Calif.

Other departments haven’t been immune to some of the trappings of social media.

When the Idaho Falls Police Department posted that there were several suspects involved in causing the death of Josh Olzak, things took a turn for the worse. Many on social media accused the cops of not arresting a suspect Tanner Cox because he had a relative who was an officer. The investigation was underway and there wasn’t enough probable cause to arrest Cox, but that didn’t stop Facebook users from voicing their grievances with the department. Cox reportedly punched Olzak, and Olzak died after hitting his head on the ground.

Cook said when people engage the department with online vitriol the department has a policy of ignoring the comments. Getting into a flame war with a commenter helps no one.

A missed opportunity

National events such as the Boston Marathon bombing highlight both sides of the social media sword.

Reddit.com users took to surveillance videos of the April 2013 bombing scene to try and locate possible suspects. Users mislabeled a man as a possible suspect and caused a veritable witch hunt of an innocent man.

FBI experts were simultaneously sifting through videos of the event frame by frame to find anyone looking suspicious. Eventually they narrowed the search down to two men wearing baseball caps later identified as Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his younger brother Dzhokhar.

This information came among thousands of leads and tips given to investigators. As The Washington Post reported April 20, 2013, the tips coming from Reddit were “almost universally wrong.”

“The theories developed via social media complicated the official investigation, according to law enforcement officials. Those officials said Saturday that the decision on Thursday to release photos of the two men in baseball caps was meant in part to limit the damage being done to people who were wrongly being targeted as suspects in the news media and on the Internet.”

Some argued Reddit spurred a quicker investigation into the bombing. Critics said if Reddit users had not cast accusations, investigators would not have felt compelled to release images of the suspects, possibly alerting the Tsarnaev brothers.

Social media training

The Idaho Falls Police Department has a policy for its own officers in using social media.

Officers are barred from talking about their jobs or posting work-related photos to social networking sites in almost every circumstance. Section 3-18 of the department’s policy manual says officers cannot post anything to social networking sites that could be construed as unfavorable to the department.

“Members are reminded that courts may scrutinize the credibility of a witness from unintentional sources such as the Internet,” the manual says.

The only exception is if a photo taken while on duty is from promotional events such as “shop with a cop.”

The manual goes on to say that the Chief of Police has the right to access content of any technology that is used or maintained by the department or the city of Idaho Falls.

For information on the use of social media by other area agencies, see info box.

Bowerman said his office has no strict policy concerning social networking — he tells his employees to use common sense.

“We want to protect our deputies’ right to express their beliefs and freedom of speech,” Bowerman said. “We’re not going to totally avoid social media, but we definitely need to be very cautious.”

This story was originally published in the Idaho Falls Post Register. It is used here with permission. Illustration by Chloe O’Laughlin.