Do you call 911 or Poke Them?

By Alexander Sanchez-Cruz –

Now instead of calling 911 to report a criminal or suspicious activity, you can just poke law enforcement or message them for help on social networks like Facebook and Twitter.

Social websites like Facebook, Twitter and Myspace try to help out police departments by creating pages devoted to wanted criminals and the apprehension of them.

Police officers use these pages and even post on social media to help apprehend criminals but sometimes they go too far.

Some police officers can’t post videos, crime photos or another kind of police information. Police departments across the country are struggling with setting appropriate boundaries for their officers concerning social networking..

Officer Trey Economindy of Albuquerque is on desk duty for posting on Facebook that the purpose of his job is to be a “human waste disposal.”  Now he is saying that “[it was] extremely inappropriate and a lapse in judgment on my part.”

Multiple cases like this have been happening since social networks were created and are still happening.

Economindy may get off lucky and keep his job.

In a New york case, an officer had a weapons change on him for listing his mood on Myspace as “devious”  and wrote on Facebook  that he was in the movie “Training Day” to “brush up on proper police procedure.”

The advice to police officers is the same given to teens: be careful what you post on the internet. You can get in trouble before someone is even a police officer.