Rather Than Blaming Twitter, NY Police Using It To Track Gang Activity

from the good-for-them dept

We've seen way too many stories of law enforcement officials blaming online tools like Craigslist, rather than using them proactively to help fight crime. Luckily, it appears that more and more folks in law enforcement are smart enough to know better. Robert Ring alerts us to a story about how gangs in New York are using Twitter to communicate and coordinate, but rather than blaming Twitter, the NYC Police Department is using it as a handy tool to find out what's going on:

Investigators are monitoring the traffic in hopes of sweeping up gangbangers before the bloodshed - and searching Twitter after attacks for clues.

"It is another tool ... just like old phone records," a police source said. "We can go through them [messages] to track these guys."

Nice to see these tools being used properly by law enforcement, rather than yet another public freakout over the wrong thing.

Filed Under: gang activity, law enforcement, new york, police, twitter
Companies: nypd, twitter