Law enforcement is increasingly using social media to investigate, share information, and catch culprits.
Four in five departments say social media has helped them solve crimes,
according to a study by the International Association of Chiefs of Police.
Here are some successful uses of social media by police:
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1. Police in Cincinnati dismantled a local street gang by arresting 71 people after a nine-month investigation using information from social media, police records, and phone records to establish link between suspects.
2. In Minnesota, a man suspected of using a fake Facebook page to speak with underage girls pleaded guilty after the social media company turned over two and a half years of information from the man’s profile, including more than 800 chats with minors.
3. Real Time Crime Center Specialist Dawn Keating used Facebook and other social networking sites to identify and locate key gang members of the North Side Taliban, preventing violence from erupting,
according to FOX 19. Keating was the first Cincinnati officer to use social media in an investigation.
4. A 15-month-old girl was returned to her mother in Utah after Salt Lake City's Unified Police Department posted pictures of her with a
caretaker on social media, KSL.com reported.
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5. After California's Redwood City Police Department posted on Pinterest a picture of a mother's bracelet engraved with the names and birth dates of her children, three phone calls came in helping identify the woman. The bracelet had been stolen
three decades ago in a burglary, Boston.com reported.
6. England's West Midlands Police located a missing man 12 minutes after a post about him was put on Facebook. A community member had seen the appeal, saw the missing individual, picked him up, and took him to the police station.
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