Police Tout Anonymous Text-a-Snitch Programs
Boston Police are touting a SnitchTexting program.
From Text-a-Tip programs allow tipsters to help police:
In Boston, the first city to heavily promote texting for crime tips, police have received more than 1,000 tips since the program began two years ago. Police credit text tips for providing them with key leads in at least four high-profile killings, including: the accidental shooting of Liquarry Jefferson by his cousin; an arson fire that killed two children; the shooting of a Boston teenager on her 18th birthday; and the fatal stabbing of a man during a bar fight.
The report goes on to say that the program is spreading in popularity among police departments all over the country. A software maker for the text program cites over “400 police departments across the country” including Tucson, AZ.
“People don’t want to be labeled as a rat,” [Springfield, MA Sgt. John] Delaney said. “This is breaking the barriers down.”
Other barriers that may also be broken down–though not mentioned in the report–are the right to face your accuser and using the tips as a sort of high-tech revenge hotline.
But civil libertarians don’t often get quoted in such stories as these. No information was available on how many of the anonymous tips have led to wrongful arrests. And who decides what tips get moved to the front of the tip line?
How do the police decide which tips on suspicious people get investigated? And if someone is anonymously texting false tips to police, how do they deal with that? How do the victims of false tips get made whole?
The report didn’t address these questions. And it’s understandable that police departments are not eager to discuss them.
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