Asingan police turn to social media to fight criminality
‘PROJECT WANTED’
ASINGAN—While most police stations and other law enforcement units post their activities and achievements on Facebook and websites, the Asingan Municipal Police Station (AMPS) decided to engage the community differently.
To boost its peace and order efforts, the AMPS, led by P/Chief Inspector Junmar Gonzales, recently launched “Project WANTED” on Facebook and Twitter.
In its Facebook account, the police station said “Project Wanted” will post information and pictures of crime suspects, particularly those named in warrants of arrests regularly to help in its crime prevention and crime solution programs of the unit.
The posting of the information and mugshots of crime suspects on its Facebook and Twitter accounts (Pnp Pio Asingan), AMPS said it will not only expose the identities of the suspects that could lead to their capture or prompt the suspects themselves to surrender to the police.
The project was conceived as a tool to inform the public of crime suspects on the run with the help of information technology experts and lawyers.
To boost the project’s effectiveness, advertising materials like tarpaulins, posters, leaflets will be installed and distributed in the town to inform the public of the existence of the Facebook page.
The AMPS said the creation of the FB page is like having a “Rogue’s Gallery” that helps identify and catch criminals so opposition to the project is expected particularly from relatives of the crime suspects who can claim being humiliated by the posts.
But AMPS said it only has one purpose: to protect the rights of law-abiding citizens.
Project Wanted will also post the videos or footage of their capers or modus operandi which have been caught on cam, it said.
“We may not be able to catch all the suspects at the same time but we are confident that with the help of all, we can slowly have them surrender or arrested so they can shed light on the charges they are facing as they also have due process of law,” it added. (Tita Roces)
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