Upstart online sites help public, police thwart misdeeds

HILO — In this age of instant information, law enforcement has another tool at its disposal to gather information to solve crimes, return stolen property and, hopefully, bring perpetrators to justice: social media.

Sometimes in court, it’s revealed that criminal defendants tipped their hand by displaying their stolen rides, drugs for sale and ill-gotten cash on sites such as Facebook and Instagram.

That’s not the only way, however, law enforcement and the public intersect or interface online. In recent years, a proliferation of social media pages have popped up, both locally and elsewhere, with ordinary citizens either attempting to assist police or, in some cases, alerting the public of the presence of police in certain locations.

On the Big Island, there are a number of those pages on Facebook, including East Side Big Island Watch, Big Island Thieves and Big Island Popo Alert.

“It’s a growing trend for law enforcement to use social media as an investigative resource and even an investigative tool. We have a unit that specifically monitors social media, and we’re aware of those accounts,” police Lt. Greg Esteban of the Hilo Criminal Investigations Section said last month. “Not everything on social media is factual, but it is a valid, valuable and necessary resource, especially in this digital age.”

Hawaii County Prosecutor Mitch Roth agrees, saying the sites have “generally had a positive effect.”

“Before this happened, neighborhood watch groups were communicating by text messages and emails. This is just one step further. And the more the community is connected with each other, I think, the safer we are,” Roth said. “I can tell you that it has helped us solve some cases.”

East Side Big Island Watch has been around for about three years, according to its founder and administrator, who spoke anonymously. He described his page as “an online neighborhood watch.”

“I do understand neighborhood watch is one of the best and strongest ways we, as a community, can lighten the load of the police department,” he explained. “My main goal is to help everybody to understand we need to back up the police department. That’s our braddahs out there. That’s our families, our cousins.”

The majority of the page’s posts is information straight from a police radio scanner. One day when the island was under a flash flood warning, East Side Big Island Watch had several posts about the flooding on the roadways, traffic hazards and road closures.

On other days, there will be posts about the areas — minus the parties’ names and street addresses — police are responding to and why the calls for assistance are made.

“Here in the Hawaii that we live in, the news that hits the TV, the news that hits the newspapers is controlled propaganda,” he said. “I understand that our economy is tourism, and they do not want to scare the tourist. When there’s bodies found and these bad things happen, a lot of times we don’t see or hear anything about it. So my whole thing is community awareness, to let the community know that this is what’s happening. If you look at today’s scanner posts, you’ll see there were about 10 (domestic violence calls) this morning. … If somebody reads that, they’ll say, ‘I don’t want to be a part of those domestic statistics. Maybe I’ll take a different approach. Maybe I’ll say ‘I’m sorry’ or ‘I’ll just walk away.’”

East Side Big Island Watch has a cellphone app that touts “Crime, Traffic, Severe Weather Watch and Live Police Scanner Feeds.”

Asked about feedback on his page from police, the man replied, “They tell me that that they like it a lot.”

Another page, Big Island Thieves, was founded more than a year ago by TK Wehrsig, a custodian at Hawaii Community College and the designer/owner of the original clothing website, Ha Toa. He said car thieves targeting the year, make and model of vehicle he owns motivated him to act.

“It got me worried, because I’d go to the store, and I would come out and maybe my car was gone,” Wehrsig said. “I wanted to start something, kind of a database type of thing, where me and my friends, if my car or my friends’ cars was to disappear, we could go someplace and … share information with each other and try to get our cars back.

“The second reason was, it was getting crazy. I have a 7-year-old son, and it was getting to be the norm where cars were being stolen, and there were a lot of robberies, and I didn’t want my son to grow up in a place where this was acceptable behavior.

“I didn’t think it was going to be that big of a deal, so I added about a hundred of my friends. I woke up the next day and there were about two- or three-hundred people added, because I set it up as (an open group). Then the next day, it got to the point where there was about about four- or five-hundred. It kept increasing and increasing. So I thought, ‘Oh, my god, I got to make rules.’”

The rules, which appear just below Big Island Thieves’ distinctive “Shame on You” cover graphic, with a finger pointing at the viewer, include commonsense items, such as no racist language, no posting of other people’s addresses, no spam posts or advertising, and a note to those who post photos and make accusations that they are responsible for their own posts. Another rule is to not bash police.

“Remember that the solution is on a two-way street,” the page reads. “HPD can not do this without us, and we can not do it without them. These local men and women are trying to juggle as many problems as possible.”

Occasionally, posts suggest what the poster wants to do with an alleged perpetrator. According to Wehrsig, “starting a post in reference of what you would like to do, or gonna to do, to the thieves is in all honestly useless. The thieves are more afraid of everyone knowing them and/or looking for the items they boosted.”

Esteban said he’s aware of those occasional posts, but unless it actually escalates into violence, police “don’t see it as vigilante justice.”

“We see it as someone whose probably been victimized before and want to assist law enforcement anonymously. And that’s their form of getting back at these offenders,” he said. “We have not encountered vigilante justice in the form of physical violence, but if there’s anything that raises alarm about potential acts of physical violence, we can consider that information as a possible threat.”

Added Roth, “There are some crazy comments that come up on those sites, but the fact that people are talking and communicating is great.”

Big Island Popo Alert takes yet a third tack, mostly focusing on police sightings around the island, including speeding enforcement and DUI roadblocks.

“Speed trap palani road,” read one recent posting, while a clever correspondent co-opted lingo from a national big-box store: “Blue light special going on by IHOP in Kona.”

The page’s administrator, Ikaika Lyau, also has a posted set of rules, including, “No racists remarks to anyone. No blasting personal information about anyone of our members or the general public.” The rules also include to use private messaging for arguments instead of doing it on the page.

Lyau didn’t respond to a private message seeking to talk about the page.

Esteban said all the sites, including Big Island Popo Alert, provide a public service.

“If someone’s aware of a potential speed-monitoring area that’s often targeted because of a high incidence of speeding and even traffic collisions, what it does is makes people slow down and be more mindful of their driving habits, including wearing their seat belts,” he said.

Esteban said social media posts are “often taken with a grain of salt, but what we need to do, in law enforcement, is to validate the information.”

Roth said the crime rate has been decreasing, “but people are talking about it more, and that’s good.”

“When people are talking to each other and they know what is going on in their communities, it’s a real positive thing,” he said.

Email John Burnett at jburnett@hawaiitribune-herald.com.