SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Lily Hay Newman reports at Future Tense that the police department in Columbia, Missouri, recently announced that its lobby will be open 24/7 for people making Craigslist transactions or any type of exchange facilitated by Internet services following a trend begun by police stations in Virginia Beach, East Chicago and Boca Raton. Internet listings like Craigslist are, of course, a quick and convenient way to buy, sell, barter, and generally deal with junk. But tales of Craigslist-related assaults, robberies, and murders where victims are lured to locations with the promise of a sale, aren’t uncommon, an item being sold could be broken or fake, and the money being used to buy it could be counterfeit. "Transactions should not be conducted in secluded parking lots, behind a building, in a dark location especially when you’re dealing with strangers. Someone you’ve never met before – you have no idea what their intentions are – whether they have evil intent or the best of intentions,” says Officer James Cason Jr. With surveillance cameras running 24 hours a day, plus the obvious bonus of a constant police presence, meeting in the lobby of the police department can help weed out people trying to rip others off. "People with stolen items may not want to meet at the police department," says Bryana Maupin.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 31 2015, @07:19PM
Fuck that stupid PR video of a cop singing a taylor-swift song. [cnn.com] Actually protecting and serving is how you build trust in the community. This is a really good idea, as long as they don't start treating like an opportunity to intimidate/track/id people just for walking in.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by keplr on Saturday January 31 2015, @11:29PM
Do you think you won't be on camera the entire time? The parking lot is watched by cameras too, so they've got your license plate numbers. Hope nothing you're selling has been reported stolen, or even just a copy of the same product.
The few times I've bought/sold from CL I pick a coffee shop during a busy time of day. You're on camera there too, but probably not feeding directly into a Police/FBI facial recognition database. Given everything that's been revealed over the last couple of years, there's no excuse NOT to be paranoid. Every horrible, petty, overzealous, and ultimately ineffective, breach of privacy the government could think of that is technologically possible has been tried. And if I can think of how to do it, other people smarter than me must have figured it out a long time ago and put it into practice.
Stay away from police and DHS-types as much as possible.
I don't respond to ACs.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 31 2015, @11:44PM
As infringements go, the fact that you were at a police station at a certain time is really, really low on the totem.
(Score: 2) by davester666 on Sunday February 01 2015, @06:41PM
Of course, they'll want a cut for facilitating the transaction...extra 200% if the transaction is illegal...