In direct opposition to what police undercover work should mean, the Prince George County, Maryland authorities have publicly announced they will be live tweeting a forth-coming prostitution sting. It’ll be like a flash mob, but with police, handcuffs and possible jail time.
From the PG Police blog:
We won’t tell you when or where, other than it’s somewhere in the county sometime next week. The PGPD’s Vice Unit will conduct a prostitution sting that targets those soliciting prostitutes and we’ll tweet it out as it happens. From the ads to the arrests, we’ll show you how the PGPD is battling the oldest profession. Suspect photos and information will be tweeted. We’re using this progressive, and what we believe unprecedented, social media tactic to warn any potential participants that this type of criminal behavior is not welcome in Prince George’s County.
You can follow @PGPDNews and search #PGPDVice as we take you along for the takedowns.
This is one way to tell the criminals to maybe do their sex trafficking in another state for a few weeks, or it could be a giant invasion of privacy to people who may or may not be charged with illegal activity. Or maybe this will be a deft mix of Cops and that parental public shaming that’s so popular on Facebook these days?
I’m just speculating here, but what if an officer accidentally arrests someone who isn’t breaking the law and tweets their photo and “information” as the blog threatens? Does that mean we’ll be reading about new social media lawsuits brought against PG County po-po? We shall see, and on Twitter it looks like. #streetsarewatching
Image via Twitter.