Social media can help and hinder fight against crime
IS MOUNTAIN Ash a town that polices itself via social media? A TV documentary has highlighted the town’s high Facebook presence, and how footage of a crime can be posted all over the social media site within an “hour” of it being committed.
It came in the BBC’s crime documentary Valleys Cops last week, and focused on a race to catch the offender responsible for a string of burglaries in Mountain Ash, with both the police and the community joining the hunt.
It saw local Detective Mark Jones lead the case for the police, with CCTV footage of one of the incidents already posted online.
He told the camera that because everyone is so trusting, they often leave doors open, which criminals know, and go about “trying door handles”.
A resident then said it only takes an “hour” for an incident like a burglary to “go everywhere on Facebook”. The name of the first suspect was put on Facebook “more than 400 times” before the police made an arrest.
But he told officers he was a “shoplifter not a burglar” before saying he was elsewhere on the night of the crime, “smoking skunk”.
After he was released, a woman from the village told cameras: “If he is innocent, we are sorry someone got the blame for something they didn’t do. That’s the only downside to social media and now he’s got a tarred name because of it.
“Most people won’t care now whether it’s true or not.”
The programme then saw new information, again on social media, stating the crime was actually committed by a local man, a convicted burglar who had “kept out of trouble for the past few years”.
With the community looking for him and his name all over social media, the man handed himself in before officers make a discovery at his home – the same jacket and trainers as those spotted in the video, as well as the handbag stolen from one of the houses.
The programme ended by revealing that the man had pleaded guilty to two counts of burglary, and was sentenced to four years in prison.
Meanwhile, the episode also saw the police team called out to a serious assault at a family home, after a man was found badly beaten in the street.
The victim, who eventually wakes up from his coma, told police he “can’t remember anything” other than a confrontation with the accused man, and asked police not to charge him with GBH. A police officer told the camera: “That’s the valleys mentality isn’t it. Being honourable and being kind, even in the most extreme circumstances like that. It’s unbelievable.”
Because there was not enough evidence against him all charges were eventually dropped.
It followed the first episode, which depicted the community of the Gurnos Estate in Merthyr Tydfil.