Few social networks are as adroit at triggering man's aspirational impulse as Pinterest. Of course, different people covet different things. In the case of police departments in fourteen cities--including Pottstown, Penn., Kansas City, Mo. and now Philadelphia--Buzzfeed reports that cops are using Pinterest to advertise what want to catch: criminals.

Their methods have been effective. Commenters are responding with times and dates of last sightings and Pottstown reports that its Pinterest page led to a 57 percent increase in arrests.

Philadelphia Police Department corporal Frank Domizio told Buzzfeed:

“It’s a marketing thing,” said Domizio, who runs the department's social media channels. "People are doing this to sell shampoo, so my question is, 'How do I use it to arrest people?'”

Of course, some of those marketing efforts also benefit the police department's brand, so to speak. Sarah Boyd, a spokesperson for Kansas City, Missouri's police department told Buzzfeed:

“The success is not just in solving specific crimes,” says Boyd. “It makes them trust us more, which makes them more likely to cooperate we us.” In other words, it’s classic community outreach.

That's Pinterest, always try to sell you something.

]]>

Few social networks are as adroit at triggering man's aspirational impulse as Pinterest. Of course, different people covet different things. In the case of police departments in fourteen cities--including Pottstown, Penn., Kansas City, Mo. and now Philadelphia--Buzzfeed reports that cops are using Pinterest to advertise what want to catch: criminals.

Their methods have been effective. Commenters are responding with times and dates of last sightings and Pottstown reports that its Pinterest page led to a 57 percent increase in arrests.

Philadelphia Police Department corporal Frank Domizio told Buzzfeed:

“It’s a marketing thing,” said Domizio, who runs the department's social media channels. "People are doing this to sell shampoo, so my question is, 'How do I use it to arrest people?'”

Of course, some of those marketing efforts also benefit the police department's brand, so to speak. Sarah Boyd, a spokesperson for Kansas City, Missouri's police department told Buzzfeed:

“The success is not just in solving specific crimes,” says Boyd. “It makes them trust us more, which makes them more likely to cooperate we us.” In other words, it’s classic community outreach.

That's Pinterest, always try to sell you something.

]]> http://betabeat.com/2013/01/cops-now-pinning-mugshots-to-pinterest-because-the-police-can-be-aspirational-too/feed/ 0 ntikuobserver Screen Shot 2013-01-11 at 3.17.25 PM http://betabeat.com/2012/11/pennsylvania-voting-machine-that-changed-obama-vote-to-romney-vote-in-viral-video-taken-out-of-service/#comments Tue, 06 Nov 2012 14:11:55 -0400 http://betabeat.com/2012/11/pennsylvania-voting-machine-that-changed-obama-vote-to-romney-vote-in-viral-video-taken-out-of-service/ Jessica Roy http://betabeat.com/?p=69239

(Screenshot: YouTube)

A video taken of a touchscreen voting machine in Pennsylvania refusing to capture an Obama vote, and instead casting the vote for Romney, was uploaded to Reddit this morning. The video garnered almost 37,000 upvotes and served up a painful 18 second flashback to post-2004 fear of “stolen votes." After hitting Reddit, the video immediately went viral, ricocheting across news websites and Twitter feeds.

The anonymous user who uploaded the video and goes by the handle centralpavote wrote in the video's YouTube description:

My wife and I went to the voting booths this morning before work. There were 4 older ladies running the show and 3 voting booths that are similar to a science fair project in how they fold up. They had an oval VOTE logo on top center and a cartridge slot on the left that the volunteers used to start your ballot.

I initially selected Obama but Romney was highlighted. I assumed it was being picky so I deselected Romney and tried Obama again, this time more carefully, and still got Romney. Being a software developer, I immediately went into troubleshoot mode. I first thought the calibration was off and tried selecting Jill Stein to actually highlight Obama. Nope. Jill Stein was selected just fine. Next I deselected her and started at the top of Romney’s name and started tapping very closely together to find the ‘active areas’. From the top of Romney’s button down to the bottom of the black checkbox beside Obama’s name was all active for Romney. From the bottom of that same checkbox to the bottom of the Obama button (basically a small white sliver) is what let me choose Obama. Stein’s button was fine. All other buttons worked fine.

Gawker spoke to a voter fraud expert who confirmed that the machine is not purposefully or maliciously attempting to keep people from voting for Obama, but instead that it's a mechanical error and simply needs to be re-calibrated. "It's a concern but not because of fraud," the expert said. "That's an obviously miscalibrated iVotronic (ES&S) voting machine... we would recommend that poll workers would recalibrate the machine and everything would be fine."

Now, NBC News reports that the machine in question has been taken out of commission in Pennsylvania. (The anonymous user's Reddit name, centralpavote, indicates that the machine was located in central Pennsylvania.) Score one for outraged internet commenters.

Update:

Mother Jones reports that a representative for the Pennsylvania Department of State has stated that a machine in Perry County, Pennsylvania was removed, re-calibrated and brought back online, but he couldn't confirm that it was the same machine from the YouTube video.

"There was a single complaint, so they recalibrated the machine, did a test run, and put it back online. We've had no complaints since then," the rep told Mother Jones.