Commentary
Police Block Facebook During Fatal Standoff
- by Erik Sass , Staff Writer @eriksass1, August 3, 2016
Following a series of high-profile incidents in which fatal shootings by police were live streamed on Facebook, law enforcement officials are pushing back by limiting the ability of suspects to broadcast these encounters to the world. In the latest such example, on Monday police in Baltimore County made an emergency request to Facebook to suspend the account of Korryn Gaines, age 23, during an armed standoff which ultimately resulted in her death.
Baltimore County Police came to Gaines’ apartment in Randallstown, Maryland to serve arrest warrants for her and her boyfriend for earlier incidents of disorderly conduct, resisting arrest and assault. Her boyfriend complied, taking a one-year-old boy out of the apartment with him and submitting to arrest.
However Gaines, who had a history of impulsive and irrational behavior, refused to leave the apartment and barricaded herself inside along with her 5-year-old-son. Subsequently she began posting live streaming video of the standoff on Facebook and Instagram, including one exchange with her son where she asks the boy what the police are doing and he replies, “They trying to kill us.”
A number of Gaines’ online contacts began responding to the videos with comments encouraging her to continue the standoff, according to officers monitoring her social media accounts, at which point the Baltimore County Police Department made the emergency request to Facebook. The company immediately complied by taking Gaines’ Facebook and Instagram profiles offline.
Finally, Gaines pointed a shotgun at one of the officers and said, “If you don’t leave, I’m going to kill you.” The officer responded by shooting at her and Gaines returned fire but missed, and was finally killed by fire from all the officers. The boy received light injuries and is being treated in a hospital.
There are a number of justifications for blocking social media access during potentially violent situations. In addition to social media contacts encouraging suspects not to comply with police, as in this case, access to social sites holds out the possibility that armed suspects might gather information about the number and position of police officers from live streaming video or texts from accomplices observing the situation.
Erik Sass is editor of Publishers Daily. You can reach Erik at eriksass@gmail.com.
Of course there are downsides as well to such a shutdown of a social media account. Many people probably feel that they need to stream or remotely record the evidence of an encounter with law enforcement (or anyone else for that matter), in order to document exactly what was said and what transpired. Not all law enforcement agencies or other govermnents will use the ability to shut off a person's connection to the outside world responsibly. Think of all the countries where this might be mis-used (of course it could be mis-used here in the US as well).
I think there is something prohibitive about such uses, surely in the terms of service to which everyone agrees when they sign up for a free account.