One police department is using Facebook to help fight crime. “Tattletale Tuesday” has been a social media routine for the Orem, Oregon police department for the past year and authorities say they solve about 90 percent of crimes through the posts.
Lt. Craig Martinez thought of the concept after noticing that many of their investigations ended in a dead end and they needed more people to come forward with information. It all starts with one simple post and Martinez says the department’s Facebook followers do the rest of the work.
https://www.facebook.com/OremDPS/posts/1220963967915458
“They repost it they share it they retweet it, it gets so much traction behind it that eventually somebody knows these people,” Martinez said. “We’ve even had some suspects call us saying I’ll come and turn myself in and talk to a detective just please take my picture off the Facebook page so it works both ways.”
Martinez even remembers the first time that a crime was solved by one of his ‘Tattletale Tuesday’ post. The department was trying to find a man that had robbed several businesses. After posting surveillance footage, it was only a matter of time before they found the suspect.
“I put it on our Facebook page and 20 minutes later we knew who he was and later the next day I believe we had him in custody,” Martinez said.
This concept has been so successful that Martinez explains that nine times out of 10, the crime is solved the same day.
“It just makes our whole community safer if we can all work together to help police do their job.”
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