Crime spree teens being elevated to stardom on TikTok
Garda concern as perceived ‘fame’ driving youngsters to upload their criminal behaviour to the platform
CAR thefts, joyrides and Garda pursuits are among the crimes young people are sharing on TikTok on a daily basis.
Following the shock footage of a stolen vehicle being rammed into a squad car in west Dublin this week, gardaí are concerned that the platform is encouraging young people to commit crimes and upload videos of them for ‘likes’.
One Dublin councillor said ‘criminal activity is being elevated to stardom’ on social media, while earlier this week the former assistant Garda Commissioner John O’Driscoll said that smartphones should be taken away from people who use them to post videos of their crimes on social media.
And while Facebook and Twitter are often used for this purpose, the Irish Daily Mail has found that TikTok is the app of choice for many young lawbreakers to exhibit their crimes.
Senior politicians also fear that, unless all social media platforms bear some responsibility, then criminal incidents such as the one in Cherry Orchard will become more frequent.
This paper has viewed dozens of TikTok accounts set up by young Dubliners who have openly shared their videos with the world.
Many feature cars being driven at reckless speeds through housing estates, while others showed tools being used to hotwire a stolen vehicle.
One account that displays the user’s stolen motorbike collection has the words: ‘You lock it, I chop it’ in the page’s description.
Another video shows two men with Dublin accents smashing through the barriers of a toll while speeding down a motorway.
One can be heard saying: ‘Go, go, go. We’re ramming this boys… We’re after ramming a toll bridge.’
In another clip, two youths record themselves being pursued by gardaí in an unmarked car down a long stretch of road.
‘Come on. Let’s smoke them off the road,’ one can be heard saying while music blares in the background.
Another common trend among young offenders is uploading their confrontation with gardaí, even if it features them in handcuffs.
In a montage clip uploaded to TikTok, a boy can be seen posing for the camera in a room in Oberstown Children’s Detention Campus for young offenders.
In another picture, a teenager can be seen proudly displaying his various charge sheets and summonses to court.
Dublin City Councillor Daithí Doolan told the Irish Daily Mail that the practice of people posting their unlawful activity on social media has become an increasingly worrying trend.
‘Criminal activity is being elevated to stardom,’ he said. ‘As opposed to uploading a video of yourself scoring a goal, many young people are posting clips of themselves terrorising a neighbourhood or driving stolen cars through residential areas,’ the Sinn Féin councillor continued. ‘These kids don’t watch TV or listen to the radio. They’re spending so much time on TikTok and are starting to feel that they should model themselves on this type of behaviour.
‘Other communities then follow suit and strive to be bigger, faster and more dangerous than the people in the next town over.’
Mr Doolan added that social media companies have a clear responsibility to put a stop to this kind of activity.
‘You wouldn’t have people on the radio or television promoting crime, so why is it allowed on these websites?’ he asked.
‘We should make it perfectly clear that we won’t tolerate this type of content and there should be serious consequences for companies that fail to take a proactive approach,’ he said.
Councillor Doolan added that gardaí are also ‘behind the curve’ when it comes to monitoring content on social media.
‘The gardaí are not properly trained in this area, which only makes way for crimes to continue to be organised online.
‘If they had the intelligence, the gardaí could have put a stop to those cars being driven into Cherry Orchard but it appears they had no idea what was going on,’ he said.
Fine Gael’s social media spokeswoman Emer Higgins said the Government is working towards making social networks a safer environment.
‘It’s appears that there’s a global trend of people feeling they have the right to put anything up online, including footage of themselves committing crime,’ she said.
‘We have our online-safety media regulation bill going through the Dáil... and it’s at its second stage,’ the Dublin West TD added.
‘It is about us as a society holding social media companies to account because, at the end of the day, they’re making money from these videos,’ she said.
‘Clicks, likes and engagement are what drive people to their platforms so it’s very important that their users’ content is regulated.
‘I also hope gardaí are monitoring the people who upload criminal activity to these sites and use it as part of their criminal investigations,’ she said.
Earlier this week, former assistant commissioner O’Driscoll said:
‘We are after ramming a bridge’ ‘We should try to remove phones’
‘These events are being organised and designed to create entertainment and there will have to be, in the process of dealing with these people in the judicial system, we’ll have to look for their ability to use social media [to be] removed.
‘We should be looking for phones to be removed from their possession so that they can’t engage in this sort of activity, as a punishment for the type of crime that they have engaged in,’ he added.
A TikTok spokesman told the Irish Daily Mail that its guidelines ‘categorically prohibit criminal content on the platform.
‘We do not allow people to use our platform to threaten or incite violence or promote any form of criminal activity.
‘Any content found to be in violation of these policies will be removed and action will be taken against violative accounts.’
The Mail is aware that many videos purporting to show crime or glorifying it have been banned from the platform.
In addition, TikTok has processes in place to cooperate with gardaí investigating matters relevant to our platform.
More than 91 million violative videos were removed during the third quarter of 2021, which equates to around 1% of all videos uploaded.