8 ms·

Local police post mugshots on Pinterest, leading to a 57% boost in arrests

109 points by 1337biz 14y ago

zupreme 14y ago
I wonder what the privacy-law impact of this will be. While all of us will probably agree with a system like this to help locate convicted felons, what about people who simply miss Jury Duty, forget about a court date, and so on. In an era where every HR professional worth her salt Googles every applicant with a serious shot at the job, this could prevent some people from getting much-needed employment. Worse yet, in instances where this causes people to be weeded out before even a phone interview, there is no effective way (outside of Google and the NSA) to track this type of behavior and the possible labor law violations that could result.
- tptacek 14y ago
  To the extent that employers want to screen candidates who skip out on jury duty, it's hard to argue that there's a "privacy" issue in outing them. Skipping jury duty should be a matter of public record. You are obligated to serve as a juror when required. Willfully avoiding a jury summons is in fact a misdemeanor crime. Don't skip jury duty. The bigger problem with posting wanted signs on social networks is that they can't be expunged. This is a real issue, but very few people ever expunge their arrest records anyways. The even bigger problem has nothing at all to do with social networks; it's that it's unfair (and probably unlawful) to screen employees by arrest record to begin with.
  - zupreme 14y ago
    That is, at it's core, my point. What happens if the case is thrown out? Even if removed from Social Network X, your fugitive status will live forever in the Wayback machine, on scraping sites, and so on.
    - tptacek 14y ago
      Ultimately this has more to do with employers than police departments, though.
- readme 14y ago
  Well, it's worth pointing out that this issue existed before pinterest. Tons of local PD's post mugshots on their websites. Try googling the names of idiots you went to high school with. You're sure to find someone's mugshot.
downandout 14y ago
Something tells me that this will not be accompanied by a 57% decrease in crime rates, but will absolutely be accompanied by a 57% increase in imprisonment and legal expenditures to detain and prosecute these people. An argument can be made that, except in the case of dangerous fugitives, using a more efficient means of finding wanted people may cause more harm than good.
- weego 14y ago
  So you are suggesting that some laws aren't worth upholding because they aren't financially viable?
  - ericHosick 14y ago
    They might be hinting at victimless crimes.
  - downandout 14y ago
    I'm suggesting that historical warrant service rates are used in calculating budgets, and making staffing and other decisions that will be hard to address in such a compressed period of time. One would assume this will result in a 57% increase in caseloads, which means 57% more time that cases take to make their way through court since more judges can't just magically appear. Most jails operate at or above capacity; a sudden 57% increase in inmates will result in all kinds of lawsuits and other expenses both for the inmates and for the counties that operate them. Finally, yes, seeing minor crimes all the way through the court system is of questionable social value relative to the economic expense.
    - bostonpete 14y ago
      All of what you say may be true, but you're not actually advocating that a good solution here is to prevent certain parts of the system from working efficiently? There are probably better and more equitable ways to reduce case loads.
  - king_jester 14y ago
crikli 14y ago
Blog spam, inaccurate headline. Original article on npr: http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2012/12/07/166678862/to-catch-a-suspect-on-pinterest http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2012/12/07/166678... The boost was in 57% of "warrant services" whatever that means, not arrests. No numbers given for the increase in arrests, just that they "actually got more people."
- nmcfarl 14y ago
  That NPR article you point out (which is really way better than this one) claims: "Warrant services" is police speak for arrests.
- DanBC 14y ago
  Thank you for that. The Pinterest page is here (http://pinterest.com/themercury/wanted-by-police/ http://pinterest.com/themercury/wanted-by-police/) I'd be interested to see if Google (or anyone) tried their face recognition on these photos and provide information to the police.
  - Adirael 14y ago
    Muddy waters. What if (when) they fire a false positive?
    - DanBC 14y ago
      Well, they'd be saying "This photo looks like the person in the photo you provided". At the moment police are relying on people saying "I saw some bloke that looked like that photo at this location", so there's not much difference.
      - rhizome 14y ago
        Humans are much, much better at pattern matching than computers, they just don't scale.
        14y ago
wazari972 14y ago
I'm not sure whether I'm supposed to upvote this post, if I do, does it mean I support the idea behind ? because I don't, I don't think that denunciation is right way to support justice ... but I'd like the post to go to the front page, the see HN comments about it!
- guylhem 14y ago
  Denonciations are a good thing if you believe a criminal should be arrested as a consequence of his initial actions. Denonciations are a bad thing if you believe that someone who didn't get caught in the act should be able to escape 972 - est-tu de Martinique ?
  - gnud 14y ago
    Denonciations are a bad thing when society can't seem to let criminals serve their time and then be done with it.
  - oes0 14y ago
    There's also a third option, people who can't (at the time) afford a lawyer to represent them. Even in minor court cases, to plead not guilty and take a case to trial costs thousands of dollars. In jail-able offenses, some municipal courts don't have public defenders. And if you are innocent and unwilling to take a plea deal, your only option can be spending $3000+ to defend yourself against a minor misdemeanor charge. (I realize these people are mostly charged with felonies it seems.)
    - jacquesm 14y ago
      > (I realize these people are mostly charged with felonies it seems.) That doesn't necessarily make them more guilty. It shouldn't cost any money at all to defend in a criminal case unless you wish to bring your own lawyer, and court provided lawyers should do better than they usually do.
- polyfractal 14y ago
  Technically, upvoting an article merely means you think it is interesting, not that you support it. So you can in good conscious upvote this article if it is interesting and you want to see the discussion. Unfortunately, most people treat up/downvotes as "agree/disagree", which is not actually the intended purpose. I routinely upvote quality comments even if I disagree with them, because the author has shared some interesting/well supported insight that provokes conversation (regardless of my personal feeling towards it)
manaskarekar 14y ago
"The tip line has been ringing off the hook. In fact, Drumheller says some people even called in to say they had seen their own mugshot online and have asked to turn themselves in to authorities." What the fuck?
- gk1 14y ago
  Some people may not realize there's a warrant out for them.
  - pgroves 14y ago
    The implication being that the police aren't doing a very good job of contacting people about warrants. The first they're hearing about it is by seeing themselves on Pinterest. Imagine the number of increased arrests if the police started using email.
    - lostlogin 14y ago
      Its rather different, but we are doing a load of outpatient healthcare work for an overworked public health board. Often calling patients multiple times over several days (on cell phone and landline) produces no contact with the person we are after. Posting a letter asking them to call us nearly always works. It's a slow process, but even when you know where someone lives, getting hold if them is hard.
  - pc86 14y ago
    Exactly; the whole reason they're on this site is that the police can't find them. It's reasonable to believe a decent percentage of them would have no idea that they're wanted.
  - stusmall 14y ago
    I've had a couple normally law abiding friends get arrested on warrants that they've had for years without knowing. It would be a traffic ticket from long ago that they either forgot about or their was a mix up in payment. Given time that ticket slowly turns into a warrant and eventually an embarrassing arrest.
benjamincburns 14y ago
The police department in my home town (Utica, NY) has been posting arrest photos on Facebook for a couple of years now. I wish there were data to determine whether or not it was having an impact, and what kinds of impacts it's having. Most people I know are pretty disgusted by it. They feel that publicizing arrests is fueling an already ripe negative PR image against the city and that posting arrest photos in a very public place leads people to assume that the arrested are guilty before they are convicted. At the same time however, think of the deterrent it is to "young punk" type criminals to have their mugshot posted in a public forum for all of their friends/family to see and for their neighbor's comments. I wonder if those who made arrest records (not conviction) public record would have done so in light of these kinds of developments. https://www.facebook.com/pages/City-of-Utica-NY-Police-Department/175041395841678 https://www.facebook.com/pages/City-of-Utica-NY-Police-Depar...
- genwin 14y ago
  In the US, businesses can legally reject employment based on an arrest record. In France it's illegal to post arrest records where there's no conviction; probably wanted posters are an exception though.
  - benjamincburns 14y ago
    I don't know if that's universally true in the US. Most labor laws such as these are set on a state (and sometimes local) level, so it's kind of a hodge-podge. For example, in Louisiana it's still legal to discriminate on the basis of sexuality, but not age, race, gender, or disability. But then in Orleans Parish (parishes are counties in Louisiana) it's not legal to discriminate on the basis of sexuality. I'm not a lawyer though, and I have no idea what the federal law says regarding arrest vs conviction records. I do know that I've filled out numerous employment applications in many states that required me to disclose convictions of misdemeanor or worse crimes, but never any that have asked about an arrest record.
  - shardling 14y ago
    Well, in the US as a whole, businesses can generally reject employment for any reason, no matter how petty. There's a small, finite list of reasons that are illegal -- race, sex, and the like -- but these have to be specifically enshrined in the law. Local governments can add their own laws on top of this, of course. Discrimination against sexual orientation has become illegal in many places within the US.
engtech 14y ago
The craziest thing about looking through the warrants is the amount of charges that are either about property or drugs. The media focuses so much on violence and sexual assault that I thought there would be more violent offenders in the mugshots.
- PotatoEngineer 14y ago
  If the media is focusing on it, it's rare. If the media stops running stories about violence (or runs fewer), then violence may be getting out of hand. If a single story about violence runs for a week, then it's rare, so violence is going down. Media is weird.
mkolodny 14y ago
Doing the same thing for missing children could help a lot of parents find their kids.
- rhizome 14y ago
  How well did putting pictures of missing children on milk cartons work?
maak 14y ago
Pintarrest
dsl 14y ago
Did anyone else notice from the screenshot that this one is kinda cute? http://pinterest.com/pin/74239093829161560/ http://pinterest.com/pin/74239093829161560/
qsddsq 14y ago
funny you can also see who re-pins your mugshot. if I were a criminal on there, time to drive up to their house and rape their kids

109 points by 1337biz 14y ago

I wonder what the privacy-law impact of this will be. While all of us will probably agree with a system like this to help locate convicted felons, what about people who simply miss Jury Duty, forget about a court date, and so on. In an era where every HR professional worth her salt Googles every applicant with a serious shot at the job, this could prevent some people from getting much-needed employment. Worse yet, in instances where this causes people to be weeded out before even a phone interview, there is no effective way (outside of Google and the NSA) to track this type of behavior and the possible labor law violations that could result.

tptacek 14y ago
To the extent that employers want to screen candidates who skip out on jury duty, it's hard to argue that there's a "privacy" issue in outing them. Skipping jury duty should be a matter of public record. You are obligated to serve as a juror when required. Willfully avoiding a jury summons is in fact a misdemeanor crime. Don't skip jury duty. The bigger problem with posting wanted signs on social networks is that they can't be expunged. This is a real issue, but very few people ever expunge their arrest records anyways. The even bigger problem has nothing at all to do with social networks; it's that it's unfair (and probably unlawful) to screen employees by arrest record to begin with.
- zupreme 14y ago
  That is, at it's core, my point. What happens if the case is thrown out? Even if removed from Social Network X, your fugitive status will live forever in the Wayback machine, on scraping sites, and so on.
  - tptacek 14y ago
    Ultimately this has more to do with employers than police departments, though.
readme 14y ago
Well, it's worth pointing out that this issue existed before pinterest. Tons of local PD's post mugshots on their websites. Try googling the names of idiots you went to high school with. You're sure to find someone's mugshot.

downandout 14y ago

Something tells me that this will not be accompanied by a 57% decrease in crime rates, but will absolutely be accompanied by a 57% increase in imprisonment and legal expenditures to detain and prosecute these people. An argument can be made that, except in the case of dangerous fugitives, using a more efficient means of finding wanted people may cause more harm than good.

weego 14y ago
So you are suggesting that some laws aren't worth upholding because they aren't financially viable?
- ericHosick 14y ago
  They might be hinting at victimless crimes.
- downandout 14y ago
  I'm suggesting that historical warrant service rates are used in calculating budgets, and making staffing and other decisions that will be hard to address in such a compressed period of time. One would assume this will result in a 57% increase in caseloads, which means 57% more time that cases take to make their way through court since more judges can't just magically appear. Most jails operate at or above capacity; a sudden 57% increase in inmates will result in all kinds of lawsuits and other expenses both for the inmates and for the counties that operate them. Finally, yes, seeing minor crimes all the way through the court system is of questionable social value relative to the economic expense.
  - bostonpete 14y ago
    All of what you say may be true, but you're not actually advocating that a good solution here is to prevent certain parts of the system from working efficiently? There are probably better and more equitable ways to reduce case loads.
- king_jester 14y ago

crikli 14y ago

Blog spam, inaccurate headline. Original article on npr: http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2012/12/07/166678862/to-catch-a-suspect-on-pinterest http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2012/12/07/166678... The boost was in 57% of "warrant services" whatever that means, not arrests. No numbers given for the increase in arrests, just that they "actually got more people."

nmcfarl 14y ago
That NPR article you point out (which is really way better than this one) claims: "Warrant services" is police speak for arrests.
DanBC 14y ago
Thank you for that. The Pinterest page is here (http://pinterest.com/themercury/wanted-by-police/ http://pinterest.com/themercury/wanted-by-police/) I'd be interested to see if Google (or anyone) tried their face recognition on these photos and provide information to the police.
- Adirael 14y ago
  Muddy waters. What if (when) they fire a false positive?
  - DanBC 14y ago
    Well, they'd be saying "This photo looks like the person in the photo you provided". At the moment police are relying on people saying "I saw some bloke that looked like that photo at this location", so there's not much difference.
    - rhizome 14y ago
      Humans are much, much better at pattern matching than computers, they just don't scale.
      - 14y ago

wazari972 14y ago

I'm not sure whether I'm supposed to upvote this post, if I do, does it mean I support the idea behind ? because I don't, I don't think that denunciation is right way to support justice ... but I'd like the post to go to the front page, the see HN comments about it!

guylhem 14y ago
Denonciations are a good thing if you believe a criminal should be arrested as a consequence of his initial actions. Denonciations are a bad thing if you believe that someone who didn't get caught in the act should be able to escape 972 - est-tu de Martinique ?
- gnud 14y ago
  Denonciations are a bad thing when society can't seem to let criminals serve their time and then be done with it.
- oes0 14y ago
  There's also a third option, people who can't (at the time) afford a lawyer to represent them. Even in minor court cases, to plead not guilty and take a case to trial costs thousands of dollars. In jail-able offenses, some municipal courts don't have public defenders. And if you are innocent and unwilling to take a plea deal, your only option can be spending $3000+ to defend yourself against a minor misdemeanor charge. (I realize these people are mostly charged with felonies it seems.)
  - jacquesm 14y ago
    > (I realize these people are mostly charged with felonies it seems.) That doesn't necessarily make them more guilty. It shouldn't cost any money at all to defend in a criminal case unless you wish to bring your own lawyer, and court provided lawyers should do better than they usually do.
polyfractal 14y ago
Technically, upvoting an article merely means you think it is interesting, not that you support it. So you can in good conscious upvote this article if it is interesting and you want to see the discussion. Unfortunately, most people treat up/downvotes as "agree/disagree", which is not actually the intended purpose. I routinely upvote quality comments even if I disagree with them, because the author has shared some interesting/well supported insight that provokes conversation (regardless of my personal feeling towards it)

manaskarekar 14y ago

"The tip line has been ringing off the hook. In fact, Drumheller says some people even called in to say they had seen their own mugshot online and have asked to turn themselves in to authorities." What the fuck?

gk1 14y ago
Some people may not realize there's a warrant out for them.
- pgroves 14y ago
  The implication being that the police aren't doing a very good job of contacting people about warrants. The first they're hearing about it is by seeing themselves on Pinterest. Imagine the number of increased arrests if the police started using email.
  - lostlogin 14y ago
    Its rather different, but we are doing a load of outpatient healthcare work for an overworked public health board. Often calling patients multiple times over several days (on cell phone and landline) produces no contact with the person we are after. Posting a letter asking them to call us nearly always works. It's a slow process, but even when you know where someone lives, getting hold if them is hard.
- pc86 14y ago
  Exactly; the whole reason they're on this site is that the police can't find them. It's reasonable to believe a decent percentage of them would have no idea that they're wanted.
- stusmall 14y ago
  I've had a couple normally law abiding friends get arrested on warrants that they've had for years without knowing. It would be a traffic ticket from long ago that they either forgot about or their was a mix up in payment. Given time that ticket slowly turns into a warrant and eventually an embarrassing arrest.

benjamincburns 14y ago

The police department in my home town (Utica, NY) has been posting arrest photos on Facebook for a couple of years now. I wish there were data to determine whether or not it was having an impact, and what kinds of impacts it's having. Most people I know are pretty disgusted by it. They feel that publicizing arrests is fueling an already ripe negative PR image against the city and that posting arrest photos in a very public place leads people to assume that the arrested are guilty before they are convicted. At the same time however, think of the deterrent it is to "young punk" type criminals to have their mugshot posted in a public forum for all of their friends/family to see and for their neighbor's comments. I wonder if those who made arrest records (not conviction) public record would have done so in light of these kinds of developments. https://www.facebook.com/pages/City-of-Utica-NY-Police-Department/175041395841678 https://www.facebook.com/pages/City-of-Utica-NY-Police-Depar...

genwin 14y ago
In the US, businesses can legally reject employment based on an arrest record. In France it's illegal to post arrest records where there's no conviction; probably wanted posters are an exception though.
- benjamincburns 14y ago
  I don't know if that's universally true in the US. Most labor laws such as these are set on a state (and sometimes local) level, so it's kind of a hodge-podge. For example, in Louisiana it's still legal to discriminate on the basis of sexuality, but not age, race, gender, or disability. But then in Orleans Parish (parishes are counties in Louisiana) it's not legal to discriminate on the basis of sexuality. I'm not a lawyer though, and I have no idea what the federal law says regarding arrest vs conviction records. I do know that I've filled out numerous employment applications in many states that required me to disclose convictions of misdemeanor or worse crimes, but never any that have asked about an arrest record.
- shardling 14y ago
  Well, in the US as a whole, businesses can generally reject employment for any reason, no matter how petty. There's a small, finite list of reasons that are illegal -- race, sex, and the like -- but these have to be specifically enshrined in the law. Local governments can add their own laws on top of this, of course. Discrimination against sexual orientation has become illegal in many places within the US.

engtech 14y ago

The craziest thing about looking through the warrants is the amount of charges that are either about property or drugs. The media focuses so much on violence and sexual assault that I thought there would be more violent offenders in the mugshots.

PotatoEngineer 14y ago
If the media is focusing on it, it's rare. If the media stops running stories about violence (or runs fewer), then violence may be getting out of hand. If a single story about violence runs for a week, then it's rare, so violence is going down. Media is weird.

mkolodny 14y ago

Doing the same thing for missing children could help a lot of parents find their kids.

rhizome 14y ago
How well did putting pictures of missing children on milk cartons work?

maak 14y ago

Pintarrest

dsl 14y ago

Did anyone else notice from the screenshot that this one is kinda cute? http://pinterest.com/pin/74239093829161560/ http://pinterest.com/pin/74239093829161560/

qsddsq 14y ago

funny you can also see who re-pins your mugshot. if I were a criminal on there, time to drive up to their house and rape their kids