Just because you saw it on the web, doesn’t mean it’s true, right? Now if you and I know this, why don’t the police, a team of trained and – lest we forget – armed public officials, get it?
Maybe I am oversimplifying things, but I often find myself wondering if the right people have been recruited to the right jobs and whether common sense is really so common. I had these thoughts again when I heard that Canadian police officers have been watching YouTube and MySpace to get the nitty-gritty on youth gangs.
Police officers of big Canadian cities such as Toronto and Montreal have recently been cited in the press as saying they use these popular networking websites as an important investigative tool in their crackdown on youth gangs. Now, youth gangs do indeed exist and according to a Statistics Canada report, 2006 saw more kids than ever facing murder charges — a phenomenon linked to an increase in gang activity.
Members of these gangs, like many other people today, apparently use these websites to upload videos of themselves. They use hip hop music and fashion to express themselves and some of the scenes include kids flashing gang signs and guns. Of course here’s another chance for officials to blame hip hop for promoting violence (conveniently forgetting that violence was around way before rap music ever saw the light of day). But to make things more absurd, Toronto Police Services Chief William Blair commented at a recent international gang conference in Montreal that the information found in these videos “has proved invaluable to us in our investigations and helping us identify the people.” (Canadian Press)
OK, so here is where I start to see red. How does a police officer, trained to work on the streets, get so far out of touch with his or her particular beat of urban territory, that he or she is getting more information from surfing the Web than from walking around the neighborhood? You see where I’m going with this? Common sense. Has anyone seen it lately?
Police officers who are in touch with the members of their community can better serve and protect their community. Cops who talk regularly with the kids on their beat, and establish a relationship with them, thereby becoming something better than the enemy, are more likely to be in the know about who’s who and doing what these days. Same with cops who work with and not against street workers who do all of the aforementioned things.
Right? It seems so obvious to me. But maybe I am being far too optimistic about the communication abilities of the police force, Canadian or otherwise. I have personally witnessed youth organizing and protesting against police brutality in just about every North American and European city I have ever been to. In person, I mean, not by watching it on YouTube. Meanwhile, cops are busy getting media savvy and broadcasting crime prevention videos on YouTube, in hopes of reaching their target audience of teenagers. Sigh.
This article was published Monday, November 19, 2007.
