Internet Search Engines and Policing

 Keeping with this week's topic of Internet search engines and their effect on society, I thought I'd take a look at how searching the internet has made the job of a police officer a lot easier during daily duties and investigations.

 Countless times in my career, I have used a google search to get information about a suspect identified in a crime. One specific example without revealing too many details. came up about a year ago when we were looking for a suspect who kept breaking into cars in town and stealing items left inside. Once we learned the name of a possible suspect, I googled the suspect's name which led me to their Twitter page. Something that a lot of people don't know is that unless you set your profile so that people have to request to follow you, in order to see your 'tweets', all of your posts are able to be read by putting your username into a google search. As a result, sure enough we were able to find the suspect tweeting out that he had several GPS units for sale. Ultimately this led to a search warrant for his residence and we were able to recover several of the items stolen from the cars.

 Other times, I've used google searches to get phone numbers for police departments out of state, if my investigation led me to need information from an out-of-state. Often times we call other police departments to see what kind of local contact history they have had while that person was living in their city or town. Similarly typing a suspects name into a search engine may provide you with an address or phone number for him/her that was otherwise unknown.

 As you can see an internet search has made the ability to obtain information easier. The ease of getting the initial basic information has led to speeding up investigations. Not many police shows on tv are very accurate in their depiction of how an investigation is conducted, however the one thing they do have right is that when you're trying to solve a crime, time is critical. The longer you go without solving the case the greater likelihood of the case not getting solved. Therefore the quicker you can get the  basic information on a suspect, the quicker you can concentrate on actual details of the crime.