LITTLE ROCK — For weeks, police came up empty in their search for a gang member charged with distributing the drug Ecstasy - until they turned to Facebook.
It took a few keystrokes for Prince George’s County, Md., officers to find their man’s user profile, where they had expected to see his usual rantings about police and coded tidbits about his chosen trade. But what they discovered was even more helpful: That very morning, the fugitive had posted a photograph of himself wearing what one officer described as a “very distinctive” purple-andteal shirt.
A few hours later, with the photograph in hand, officers spotted the suspected dealer on the street. “We picked him out right away,” said Sgt. John O’Donnell of the Prince George’s gang unit. “You couldn’t have missed him. He knew we were looking for him. But he couldn’t help himself from updating Facebook.”
The arrest highlights the increasing use of Facebook and other such social-networking sites by street and drug gangs to broadcast messages, boast of successes and recruit members, according to local and federal authorities. The sites offer a never-ending panoply of gang members’ comments about drug dealing, weapons and violence, as well as photographs of gang tattoos and of members flashing gang signs and standing under gang-related graffiti - an intelligence boon for law enforcement.
Police and federal agents say they often turn first to Facebook and Myspace, two popular social media outlets, to gather information about gangs, their members and their “friends.”
In Prince George’s County, for example, undercover police have “friended” many gang members to help keep tabs on them and to better understand associations within the groups. Social media pages are not always available for public viewing, but users who do not properly set their security settings can leave their pages open for all to see, including the police.
In Washington, D.C., officers comb sites to produce a weekly “social media” report for detectives on the latest information and trends related to street gangs, an ever-evolving universe of idiosyncratic neighborhood crews with assorted alliances and beefs.
“It’s like a spider web of connections,” said Lt. Michael Pavlik, head of the department’s intelligence unit. ”You find one and track that down, and find a friend and then follow that. It’s a wealth of information, and it helps you keep up with them in a way we never imagined just a few years ago.”
Federal authorities also have tapped into Facebook and Myspace for help in major gang investigations.
In one case, members of a drug gang in Washington openly discussed the narcotics trade on a member’s Facebook profile page, according to court papers filed by the FBI in March.
“SNITCHES WANT ME LOCKED UP,” one suspected dealer wrote, the papers say. About 20 minutes later, he added that he had been frisked by police. “The streets don’t love me,” he wrote, according to agents. “Jumpers came out like I had a bomb strapped to me yesterday.”
Another suspected dealer complained in a lengthy comment string that someone was “watering down the pack” of PCP, a hallucinogen - a comment an FBI agent helpfully translated in court papers as the process of creating “more, though less potent narcotics.”
The gang members were apparently so addicted to social media that jail didn’t stand in their way. Though the gangmembers had been detained, their Facebook pages were still being updated “via Mobile Web” applications, agents wrote. “Life sucks right now,” one dealer wrote.
This year, agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement sought information from Myspace because members of MS-13, a violent street gang, were reportedly using the network to silence a federal witness. The witness had “an active order of execution, also known as a green light,” agents wrote in court papers, and a gang member was sending the man messages through Myspace in the apparent hope of luring him back to Washington.
Immigration and CustomsEnforcement agents also obtained a court order in June to get information about the Facebook page of a suspected MS-13 member even though he had used a different name on his profile page. Agents were able to determine the user’s real identity after studying photographs and other images that the gang member had uploaded to the page, they wrote. Among those, agents wrote, was one of a tattoo onthe suspect’s right shoulder that depicted a “laughing and crying face,” a common image among gang members that reflects the saying, “Laugh now, cry later.”
And last month, federal agents and Fairfax County, Va., police were able to track down a member of MS-13 who had been wanted for more than two years in a gang-related stabbing. They checked his Facebook profile and found hehad posted his new hometown (New Orleans) and phone number. In his profile picture, he flashed an MS-13 symbol to the camera, according to police.
“Gangs are just following societal trends,” said a federal law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak about how agents use social media to target gangs. “Facebook andMyspace are now some of their primary methods of communication.”
Still, police officials said, it can be difficult to distinguish real threats from jokes or teenage bravado.
For example, Pavlik said, a suspected gang member recently posted a photograph of himself holding a pistol while sitting at a dinner table with a woman believed to be his grandmother. Police didn’tjust rush off to arrest the man, however.
“You can’t just get a search warrant because some guy is holding what you think is a real gun or is photographed smoking what you think is marijuana,” said Pavlik, adding that the department has strict protocols that govern how officers monitor social media sites. “It may help later. But we have to respect the First Amendment rights of people.”
Front Section, Pages 4 on 10/30/2011