Facebook Friend Turns into Local Police Arrest

[rjranay]

point is, this kids sang, that's why they got caught.

 

[eddieroolz]

Meh, whatever they need to do to catch people doing wrong things. People would be praising the police if it was catching a pedophile, why all the negative reaction to this?

 

[Guest]

Actually, I think the important information in the article was: "...busted by the local authorities for sporting underage drinking on Facebook...". English is not my native language, but to me it looks like they were busted for PROPAGATING underage drinking on FACEBOOK. So it doesn't matter if there was an alcoholic beer inside the bottle or not, or if there was any bottle at all before image manipulation. So the photographs are evidence.

 

[Guest]

HOLD. THE police made a fake account with some girls picture and caught this kid with a beer bottle in his hand. I think it more of an entrapment case to me.

 

[ltgrunt]

Nothing you post on a social networking site is ever truly private. If someone posts pictures or blogs about doing something that they could get arrested, fired, divorced or deported for doing, it's their own damn stupid fault when they get caught.

In this case, the important takeaway point isn't whether or not the police should or defensibly could use this tactic. The important takeaway point in this case is that this idiot kid shouldn't have been drinking in the first place, and since he was stupid enough to do it in the first place *and* stupid enough to post pictures of it online, he deserves what he gets.

 

[WyomingKnott]

[citation][nom]rastafari420[/nom]Man, who does the editing for Toms Hardware. Every single article i have read has errors. Local police is using Facebook to crack down on underage drinking.[/citation]
Isn't the site written in German, then translated to English? I wonder if it's a machine translation, at least for the first pass.

 

[dvanholland]

Someone should fine the police for breaching Facebook's Terms and Conditions by using a fake profile...

 

[Parrdacc]

So the police use Facebook. No surprise really even though imho it is somewhat of an invasion. I mean it sounds like the cops just seem to spam people with requests and whoever accepts they go to their page and look for something they can arrest people for, all while being a hot college student or whatever. Oh and let's not forget employers who use it to keep track of employees activities outside of the workplace. CNN did a report on a teacher who went on vacation to Europe, personal vacation not a school one, and she posted a couple of pics two of which where of her holding up some Guiness and some other beer. She was fired for it. School said that was "inaporpriate" behavior for teacher in their school.

Personally I think you should ever believe, what you see or read anyway on these social sites. For all you know that nice looking 19 year old college student could be Bubba

 

[Guest]

I don't understand why the legal age is still so high?
Is the law kept just so they can fine people to get revenue to bust parties so they can keep employing (possibly) too many police officers and have something to do?

In USA we have something called 'log rolling'. Essentially it is legal bribery. Since the Federal Government is prohibited to force states to set a minimum drinking age, they tied the age of 21 into Federal Aid to road construction/maintenance. Meaning if you want the Fed's help to pay for your state roads, then you must change the legal age to 21. Only state that I know of that did not accept was Louisiana. Their age limit is still 18 I believe.

 

[Guest]

I don't understand why the legal age is still so high?
Is the law kept just so they can fine people to get revenue to bust parties so they can keep employing (possibly) too many police officers and have something to do?

In USA we have something called 'log rolling'. Essentially it is legal bribery. Since the Federal Government is prohibited to force states to set a minimum drinking age, they tied the age of 21 into Federal Aid to road construction/maintenance. Meaning if you want the Fed's help to pay for your state roads, then you must change the legal age to 21. Only state that I know of that did not accept was Louisiana. Their age limit is still 18 I believe.

 

[jellico]

What a joke. That "evidence" is nothing of the sort.

Cop: "Son, we got a picture showing you doing some underage drinkin'!"

Teen: "What that? That's not beer. It's sparkling apple juice. Didn't want my friends to think I was a wuss. You have that bottle so you can actually ascertain what I was drinking, right?"

Cop: "Uhhhhhh"

Judge: "Case dismissed."

 

[madman1391]

Quote from Facebook TOS

"You will not provide any false personal information on Facebook, or create an account for anyone other than yourself without permission."

and

"You will not solicit login information or access an account belonging to someone else."

It appears to me that the police are in the wrong in this case unless that "Good looking girl" was employed by the police department and she was the only one accessing the account.

 

[antilycus]

The state needs more money and this is just another way of taxing people. Protect yourself and protect your money. Do side jobs for cash and watch what you post online, suckers.

 

[city_zen]

The minimum age to ENLIST IN THE US ARMED FORCES is 17 y/o (with parents' consent) or 18 y/o (w/o parents' consent).
But you have to be 21 y/o to be allowed to legally drink alcohol.
Errr ... Am I the only one who thinks there's something wrong there?
Only in America ...

 

[anamaniac]

In Canada, some people are lobbying for the drinking age to be brught down to 16...
As long as it's responsible, who the hell cares?
These cops need to be slapped.

 

[Guest]

These redneck cops are wasting time/resources trying to bust underage drinking via facebook? And, the tactics used - welcome to the new America, comrades. Big Bother is EVERYWHERE.

 

[webbwbb]

There are a few things I would like to point out here.

1) The kid could have had a caption on the photo that said "Having a beer" or something similar that would provide ample evidence for them to press charges against him.

2) Facebook allows law enforcement to abide by a different set of rules to help them catch criminals. As that officer said, they ARE allowed to use these same methods to catch child predators; Facebook does not have any policy that discriminates between different types of crimes that the police are looking for. Even if Facebook did not allow it, the most that could happen is that they would close the account or possibly even block the police station's IP address.

3) The legal drinking age in the US is set at 21 because of brain development. On average, a persons brain has not fully developed until the age of 20. They added an extra year because a significant amount of the population does not finish brain development until around 21. Studies have shown that consuming large amount of alcohol in people who do not have fully developed brains exponentially increases the chances of alcoholism.

I would also like to say that even if you disagree with the acts of a few law enforcement officers that does not mean you should speak about them all in such a derogatory way. These men and women experience things that most of us could not possibly understand or handle and sometimes even lose their lives to protect US. To illustrate this point, even if you disagree with my perspective here, that does not mean that you should hate everyone who comments on a Tom's Hardware article.

I want to thank anyone in law enforcement for what they do to serve me and those I know. I would also like to say that I believe this world would be in a much better place if people simply respected authority. Even if you do not consider the three previous points that I made, you should at least consider this.

 

[thegreathuntingdolphin]

I love all the people who say to contest if alcohol was in the bottle. LOL. I can see that:
Kid: But officer...it was just sparkling apple juice!! Then just cola! Seriously!!!
or
Kid: It was photoshopped officer!!!

You won't convince a judge, a jury, or a cop. (BTW, they can tell if something has been photoshopped). Also to all the pseudo lawyers posting, possession of alcohol by a minor is a crime, not just drinking it. If your a minor with a beer, especially an open one, you can get ticketed for possession.

I do NOT like the police roaming the net looking for crime like this; however, this kid is just plain stupid. He was drinking illegally, let pics be taken (and tagged) of himself, AND he friended a person he didn't know! He's lucky the college didn't find him first. I remember the first semester in a new dorm at the college I attended. There was a waiting list of 200 people for rooms. Midway through the semester the wait list was gone as over 200 people were kicked out for drinking/drugs/etc. Naturally, the kids friended their RA which gave the college access to their pages. Not only did they lose the money on the room, they also got fined a grand for violating their room contract! LOL.

 

[thegreathuntingdolphin]

I love all the people who say to contest if alcohol was in the bottle. LOL. I can see that:
Kid: But officer...it was just sparkling apple juice!! Then just cola! Seriously!!!
or
Kid: It was photoshopped officer!!!

You won't convince a cop, a judge, or a jury. (BTW, they can tell if something has been photoshopped). Also to all the pseudo lawyers posting, possession of alcohol by a minor is a crime, not just drinking it. If your a minor with a beer, especially an open one, you can get ticketed for possession.

I do NOT like the police roaming the net looking for crime like this; however, this kid is just plain stupid. He was drinking illegally, let pics be taken (and tagged) of himself, AND he friended a person he didn't know! He's lucky the college didn't find him first. I remember the first semester in a new dorm at the college I attended. There was a waiting list of 200 people for rooms. Midway through the semester the wait list was gone as over 200 people were kicked out for drinking/drugs/etc. Naturally, the kids friended their RA which gave the college access to their pages. Not only did they lose the money on the room, they also got fined a grand for violating their room contract! LOL.