The New York Post tells a tale this morning of a man who was reading a comment string on facebook about a bagel shop closing and recognized the name of the man he mugged on the steps of the Museum of Natural History in NYC three decades ago.
The exchange went like this:
“@ Claude soffel, You may not remember this (about ’76 or ’77) but a long long time ago I walked up the steps of The Museum of Natural History one afternoon, trying to look like a tough guy to [somebody] & saw you standing there at the top of the steps, I walked up to you & (mugged) you for your bus pass. . . . Finally I can say ~ I”M VERY SORRY that you had to go through that crap that day long ago, I wish it had never happened but it did. Like I said I was trying to look tough to impress some guy who didn’t believe I was in a gang, pretty frickin’ stupid huh ? So once again I’m truly sorry for taking your bus pass back then – forgive me & thanks for reading this “strange” & very long message! Peace & love to you my brother…!!!”
And Claude Soffel replied:
“Michael A. Goodman, clearly your a “bigger man” today. wow. Memory is a funny thing, I recognize your name now, as well. So, apology accepted. Interestingly, I have dedicated a large portion of my life to helping other men be the man they have always wanted to be, and moments like this one continue to fuel my faith that the battle may be uphill but so rewarding. Any man who draws aline for himself, “Today I step forward for myself, my family, and humanity” is a hero to me. So let us now, jointly, put this in its proper place, behind us.”
Taking Mr. Soffel’s lead, let’s put the mugging behind us–but now think about how social media could work in actually solving crimes. Facebook is being used by criminals to post their crimes online, so it is time that facebook the organization adds an anonymous tip plug-in feature that would direct tips to the authorities. Wouldn’t a person just call the anonymous tips number for their local police department? Sure, but user experience would dictate that you want to keep the user within the facebook ecosystem. This goes against Mark Zuckerberg’s utopia of the Open Graph, and we all know that facebook would probably figure out some way to store and monetize data (as well as hand it over to the NSA), but there are undoubtedly thousands of people with information about homicides and missing persons on facebook as we speak. And since there are more than 200,000 unsolved murders since 1980, there are undoubtedly at least a few hundred killers posting cat videos and Walking Dead spoilers on facebook well.
How would an anonymous tips button work on facebook? How about starting with a simple button in the settings dropdown, right below the feedback button. This is unobtrusive. Wording could be something like: “Report a Crime.” From there, the user is taken to a page that explains the anonymity, and offers the opportunity to send a message to law enforcement, a 1-800 number that users can either call or text, or an email address. Since the federal government has trouble tracking unsolved murders (there is no nationwide unsolved murders database), I would honestly feel better if the information would go into a task force staffed by both facebook and law enforcement. The task force would then forward the tips to the local agencies for follow up. Two hundred and fifty million people log into facebook every day. Having a prompt–even if hidden behind a drop down–would surely bring in information that would help law enforcement catch criminals.
Zuckerberg is all about data and information and openness. There is no one that wants information more than the keeper of an unsolved crime.
