Maryland Police Dept. To Live Tweet Prostitution Vice Stings
from the you're-not-helping dept
Prostitution, they say, is the oldest of professions, which sort of has to be bullshit, because if selling sex was the first job ever, how could anyone ever pay for the sex? But I digress. Even if it isn't the oldest profession, it certainly has a grand tradition of being used to whip up moral panics, such as when Congress freaked the hell out when they discovered, gasp, prostitutes can use Twitter! Who'd have thought? (Doesn't syphilis make your thumbs fall off or something?) In any case, we've also recently seen that some police departments mistakenly believe that they too should be peddling themselves on social media, never mind how little they think through their campaigns.
But where prostitution and police using social media intersect results in the really terrible idea one Maryland department had to live-tweet/blog police prostitution stings. From the department's own blog:
We won't tell you when or where, other than it's somewhere in the county sometime next week. The PGPD's Vice Unit will conduct a prostitution sting that targets those soliciting prostitutes and we'll tweet it out as it happens. From the ads to the arrests, we'll show you how the PGPD is battling the oldest profession. Suspect photos and information will be tweeted. We're using this progressive, and what we believe unprecedented, social media tactic to warn any potential participants that this type of criminal behavior is not welcome in Prince George's County. You can follow @PGPDNews and search #PGPDVice as we take you along for the takedowns.Prostitution is undoubtedly a complex subject, but one where many people feel that a hardline legal approach to it is inappropriate. In some places in this country, it isn't even illegal. Where it still is illegal, many social workers will advocate a softer approach than shaming the hell out of everyone and throwing the book at hookers. That's what we've been doing all this time, after all, and it hasn't fixed a damned thing.
Also, police departments are not in the damned entertainment business. That last line on their post, about taking the public along "for the takedowns"? Screw them. Do your jobs, make things as safe as you possibly can, and leave the entertaining to the professionals. Posting names, never mind pictures, directly from the police of the accused is not fun, it isn't entertaining, and it sure as hell ain't justice. And I'm not the only one that thinks so.
But they then decided it was a good idea to live-tweet the sting as it was happening — which would include taking photos of suspects and posting them on Twitter — using the hashtag #PGPDVice. It's mystifying that the police would think that live-tweeting a sting would get them any good publicity. After all, it was just last week that the New York Police Department saw its attempt at Twitter outreach go terribly, when they tried to start the hashtag #myNYPD to get pictures of people hanging out with the cops and instead got inundated with stories of people who had been targeted by stop-and-frisk and racial profiling.If you must attack prostitutes and their johns, at least try to keep a bit of the dignity of your profession while you're at it. You keep policing everyone, and I'll handle the entertainment bit.
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Filed Under: maryland, police, prince george county, prostitution, social media, stings
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Protip: sometimes things are unprecedented because they are a terrible idea to begin with.
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context matters
That's akin to you're whipping up your own moral panic by glossing over very important details.
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Re: context matters
You know, that and the fact that their original blog post announcing this showed a woman in handcuffs. But, hey, why let inconvenient facts get in the way of a good rant? Carry on, good buddy!
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Re: Re: context matters
And the collateral image damage may be a reasonable issue, it clearly isn't what's mentioned or intended.
I'm as appalled by the PD plans as anyone, but lets not jump off in directions that aren't readily available to the reader of the post.
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Re: Re: Re: context matters
See this, as well as the subsequent comment thread for additional info.
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Re: context matters
In the PD's *own tweet* about it, they showed a photo of them arresting a prostitute (not the john). Looks like they've now deleted it though. Either way, it suggested they were going to post photos of the prostitutes too...
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Re: context matters
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Lesson learned:
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Out of curiosity...
Oh, right...
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100420/1041329109.shtml
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Re: Out of curiosity...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/07/AR2008030703484.html
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Really? What happened to the Techdirt mantra: "Everyone is a content creator". I guess that only applies to content you approve of.
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Wish I was there..
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Plan:
Step 2, Register new twitter handle that seems plausibly official.
Step 3, Prepare a bunch of celeb, politician, animal, clown, etc. photos for upload.*
Step 4, When the alert goes off, make sure that hashtag is trending like crazy.
* This looks like a good source for pics: http://www.princegeorgescountymd.gov/sites/PoliceDepartment/AboutUs/Pages/default.aspx
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I have no problem with this as long as they are *consistent* about it.
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This will be a great success.
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Near as I can tell this is the same tactics used by the copywrong groups to try and instill the idea that anyone they bust is automatically guilty prior to any sort of jury being rounded up. How long till some lawyer uses that as attempting to influence the court prior to the case being heard?
Being tried in the court of public opinion doesn't sound all that fair. (even with newspapers)
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to answer your question...
wimpy: i'll gladly pay you tuesday...
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We won't tell you when or where, other than it's somewhere in the county sometime next week. The citizens of the United States will conduct a police corruption sting that targets those depriving citizens of their rights without due process and under color of authority and we'll tweet it out as it happens. From the ads to the (lack of) arrests, we'll show you how the people are left to battle corruption that continues to spiral out of control. Suspect photos and information will be tweeted. We're using this progressive, and what we believe unprecedented, social media tactic to warn any potential bad cops that this type of criminal behavior is not welcome in anywhere in the country. You can follow #Filmyoufuckersrightback and search #Fairenough-wefilmyoutoo as we take you along for the takedowns.
You know, just to make sure EVERYBODY'S following the rules...
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