The camerawork is not perfect and the footage a little grainy, but the Toronto policewoman looks straight into the camera and immediately asks for help.
She wants the public to help her catch a man wanted for a vicious sexual assault, which she details right down to his black puffy jacket, as a police sketch of his stocky unsmiling face appears onscreen.
It’s a move that marries hugely popular online social networking with old-fashioned police work: The footage is on the world’s biggest video sharing site YouTube, a few clicks away from Beyonce’s latest music video.
The aim is to tap into the massive community that cannot go a day without logging on to chat, share information and soak up online multimedia.
And the global police agency Interpol has taken note.
“It’s inevitable,” said Dimitrios Souxes, a criminal intelligence officer based at the agency’s Lyon headquarters, about the shift to new media.
“They are very successful and that is why we feel the need to go forward. No matter what, we have to follow developments otherwise we will be overcome and we will be outdated,” he said.
Interpol has already nabbed two prolific pedophiles after unprecedented public appeals netted hundreds of tipoffs and has video clips of Rwandan war criminals on Facebook, Myspace and YouTube — sites it regularly monitors.
But at a recent conference on tracking fugitives in South Africa, Interpol secretary general Ronald Noble said the agency needed to find more ways to harness the Internet.
“People use the Internet routinely to find former classmates or individuals with similar interests. There is no reason why law enforcement should not avail itself of this same resource,” he told delegates.
Web sites could be used to report sightings and track fugitive movements, to compare photographs of wanted persons, and upload videos, he said.
“One of the recommendations of this very conference is going to be the extensive use of the public and social networks,” Souxes said, “because we have realized that some people are posting video clips or photographs related to criminals.”
The unavoidable risk of criminals getting a heads up on the shared public information is outweighed by the potential benefits, he said.
“There is a risk, you can’t avoid it,” Souxes said. “But nevertheless, can you imagine how many thousands of people are logging every half an hour on the Internet?”
Constable Scott Mills of the Toronto Police Service, whose Crime Stoppers YouTube videos are even broadcast on the city’s subway stations, is an old hand at navigating new media.
“Our Web site trafficked in five years, approximately 439,000 unique page hits. In one video of a wanted Hells Angels gang member, there are over 400,000 views,” he said.
One case that stands out is that of a 17-year-old who was beaten, stripped naked and murdered in a gruesome attack believed to have been watched by more than 100 people. A nine month investigation proved fruitless. Then the police turned to YouTube.
“A short while later we solved the case,” said Mills.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
‘BODIES EVERYWHERE’: The incident occurred at a Filipino festival celebrating an anti-colonial leader, with the driver described as a ‘lone suspect’ known to police Canadian police arrested a man on Saturday after a car plowed into a street party in the western Canadian city of Vancouver, killing a number of people. Authorities said the incident happened shortly after 8pm in Vancouver’s Sunset on Fraser neighborhood as members of the Filipino community gathered to celebrate Lapu Lapu Day. The festival, which commemorates a Filipino anti-colonial leader from the 16th century, falls this year on the weekend before Canada’s election. A 30-year-old local man was arrested at the scene, Vancouver police wrote on X. The driver was a “lone suspect” known to police, a police spokesperson told journalists at the
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has unveiled a new naval destroyer, claiming it as a significant advancement toward his goal of expanding the operational range and preemptive strike capabilities of his nuclear-armed military, state media said yesterday. North Korea’s state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said Kim attended the launching ceremony for the 5,000-tonne warship on Friday at the western port of Nampo. Kim framed the arms buildup as a response to perceived threats from the US and its allies in Asia, who have been expanding joint military exercises amid rising tensions over the North’s nuclear program. He added that the acquisition
RSS