A college student in Wisconsin was stung by the police for being a Minor in Possession of Alcohol (MIP) recently via Facebook. The kid had about 400 friends on Facebook and accepted the offer of what appeared to be a young, pretty girl to be friends on the social networking site. This allowed his new “friend” to access the 19 year old’s photos on Facebook, at least one of which showed him holding a beer can. The new “friend” was actually a police officer who then contacted the kid and got him down to the police station where apparently he gave a confession to possessing or consuming beer while underage.
I would like to be shocked or dismayed by the Big Brother tactics employed by this, obviously underworked, police officer, but I am not. I have blogged previously about people needing to be very careful about what they post on their Myspace and Facebook profiles, because it can and will be used against you. I have also discussed the lengths to which local police agencies will go to find and ticket underage drinkers. Our page concerning Kansas MIP and MIC cases on our website talks about officers going undercover at high school basketball games to try to hear about teenage beer parties. Officers regularly roam neighborhoods on weekends looking for groups of cars that may indicate a party is happening, and then go look in windows to see if they can spot a young-looking person drinking a beer.
Different people will feel differently about the drinking age and whether expending any precious police resources on Kansas MIP and MIC cases is appropriate. That is not my issue with the Wisonsin Facebook MIP case. It is one thing to try to find and prevent active, ongoing drinking by minors because kids that drink are in harm’s way while they are drinking and intoxicated. They can get sick (and are afraid to report it to adults or go to the hospital because of getting cited for MIP or MIC), they can get in cars and have an accident, they get in physical altercations and things like date rape can happen. So, it is at least arguable that the police should try to prevent underage drinking while it is happening. However, it is a total waste of time and money to be going on the internet, setting up fake profiles, “friending” everyone you can find under the age of 21, and then reviewing their profiles and photos for evidence of prior drinking.
A photo of a prior episode where a young person held a container that looks like an alcoholic beverage container is not good evidence of the crime. There is likely no proof of the jurisdiction in which the “possession” occurred from a photo, and there is no evidence that the container actually contains alcohol. The label of the can or container, assuming you could read that it says something like “contains 3.2% alcohol”, is hearsay and can’t be offered to prove the truth of that statement, that the can actually contains 3.2% alcohol. There are also situations in which a person under 21 may legally possess alcohol (i.e., with his or her parents, serving drinks at a restaurant, etc.). The police also have to know what date, at least roughly, that the drinking allegedly occurred, which an online photo won’t usually tell you. So, in addition to all of the trouble of setting up these stings to get the photos of the young people, the police then have to count on a full confession from the suspect. That is the only way that they can get actual evidence of an MIP or MIC that they can use in court to get a conviction. The person in the photo would have to come in give a statement that the container in the photo contained alcohol, they were drinking or possessing it, that it all occurred in that particular jurisdiction, and when it happened.
In other words, this is an enormous amount of work by the police to try to nail someone for a fairly minor charge, and for conduct that has already occurred in the past, maybe not even recent past. And, the police are using underhanded tactics by lying to the suspects in order to get access to their photos online. And, none of this really addresses the real problems with underage drinking. The kid in Wisconsin paid a $272.00 fine and moved on with his life. I am not sure what lesson that he learned, other than to watch out for cops on the internet. I have not seen this specific tactic used in a Kansas MIP or MIC case, but I won’t be surprised when it happens. What you put online about yourself you are really putting in the public domain, and it will be used against you one way or another. Apparently, the government has computers and they are using them to watch you.