FACEBOOK LIVE IS BECOMING A GRUESOME CRIME SCENE FOR MURDERS

Chicago man may have filmed his own murder on Facebook Live this week.

At the start of the June 15 livestream, Antonio Perkins is seen with a group in front of a house. Six minutes later, an apparent blast of gunfire can be heard, and the 28-year-old collapses. The video screen goes dark, but cries fill the rest of the 14-minute video, until authorities arrive at the scene. Now Chicago police are looking at the video, the Chicago Tribune reported on June 16, as a clue to the tragedy.

Facebook Live, which allows users to broadcast live video to followers, has quickly become more than a means of entertainment. It can also offer a window into crimes and accidents everywhere in the world, as they happen.

On March 31, another Chicago man was shot and injured in a Facebook Live video. And on June 13, French ISIL sympathizer Larossi Abballa turned to Facebook Live after murdering a police officer and his partner in Magnanville, France. In the video, he also threatened violence at the ongoing Euro 2016 soccer championship.

As soon as Abballa was brought to Facebook’s attention, the social media giant deleted his 12-minute video. However, it has not taken down Perkins’s video—a version remains available on another user’s profile, with a graphic content disclaimer at the start. Facebook did not respond to requests to comment.

Like most social media sites, Facebook usually evaluates disturbing content posted to its platform within 24 hours of a user flagging it. But since the Live feature plays out in real time, violent videos are difficult to find and take down before they go viral. To combat the problem, Facebook is decreasing its reliance on user feedback, and says it will expand the team that reviews live content around the clock.

On June 14, Nicole Mendelsohn, Facebook’s VP of Europe, the Middle East and Africa, suggested that Facebook could become all video in the next five years. If that’s true, it will have to up its game against violent live content.

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BOP IT IN AN UBER: THE MOST INVENTIVE WAYS TO STOP CRIME BEFORE IT HAPPENS

As anyone with a toddler, terrier or a black belt in karate will know, distraction techniques can work wonders. The latest to realise this is the taxi company Uber, which is hoping distraction will protect its drivers from being assaulted by drunken fares. In one US city, Uber drivers are taking part in an experiment in which they leave a Bop It – a noisy, electronic children’s toy – on the back seat, for their tipsier passengers to play with. Drivers, the company hopes, will be safer from physical attacks, though not, presumably, from intense irritation.

“An intoxicated rider who is engaged in something interesting is less likely to be irritable and aiming aggression at the driver,” said Joe Sullivan, Uber’s chief security officer. It is not the only behaviour-modification experiment the company is trying. In a rather less infantilising move, it has also advised drivers to install mirrors on the back of seats so passengers can see themselves – the thinking is that this is more likely to make them aware of their actions.

The idea that sparking behavioural changes can reduce crime or undesirable acts has been around for decades, and runs from flimsy psychological theories to widely accepted guidelines taken on by governments and urban planners, such as the Crime Prevention through Environmental Design (CPTED) approach.

In Tokyo, for example, blue street lights are said to have reduced crime and resulted in fewer suicides when they were installed at stations. There are a number of theories for this, from blue being a calming colour to the strangeness of it making people behave differently, but there is no reliable data that proves it works. This hasn’t stopped the idea from taking off – blue lighting was installed at Gatwick station in 2014 after a high number of people had killed themselves there, and according to a spokesperson involved with the scheme, it has worked, with no suicides at the station since. In a similarly colourful vein, academics from the University of Birmingham advised construction site managers to paint JCBs pink to deter thieves.

One plan even tried to harness the power of parental instincts. In 2012, large murals of babies’ faces were painted on shop shutters in Woolwich, south London, in a bid to prevent antisocial behaviour (the shops had been targeted in the riots the previous year). “The evidence suggests that babies’ faces, the round cheeks and the big eyes, promote a caring response,” Tara Austin, from the advertising agency Ogilvy & Mather, which ran the project under its behavioural changes arm, told the BBC.

There are other, more pernicious, schemes. Critics have said the use of classical music at stations to deter teenagers from hanging around is part of a wider assault on young people and their right to use public space (even that it is “a form of low-intensity class warfare”). The Mosquito anti-loitering device, which has been used by several councils and shops, has a “teenage setting” that emits a sound only those under 25 can hear, but has attracted criticism from human rights organisations.

And as for drunks in taxis? Seamus Balfe has been a London taxi driver for 16 years and says drunken aggression is very rare. “If they do [get aggressive], I just stop the cab and tell them to get another one.” His bigger problem with drunk passengers wasn’t them wanting to fight him, but forgetting where they wanted to go. In that case, of course, a Bop It is no help at all.

Writing

1. Write an essay (a page long) on one of the following topics; make extensive use of the vocabulary.

1) Punishment is justice for the unjust.
St. Augustine 354-430

2) The generality of men are naturally apt to be swayed by fear rather than reverence, and to refrain from evil rather because of the punishment that it brings than because of its own foulness.

Aristotle BC 384-322, Greek Philosopher

3) Retaliation is related to nature and instinct, not to law. Law, by definition, cannot obey the same rules as nature.

Albert Camus 1913-1960, French Existential Writer

4) In its function, the power to punish is not essentially different from that of curing or educating.

Michel Foucault 1926-1984, French Essayist, Philosopher

5) The first and greatest punishment of the sinner is the conscience of sin.
Seneca

6) Punishment is the last and the least effective instrument in the hands of the legislator for the prevention of crime.

John Ruskin 1819-1900, British Critic, Social Theorist

2. Choose one of the headlines below and write a news report.

· “Jilted bride-to-be smashed up ex-fiancé's car after he refused to pay   for her unworn wedding dress”

· “Head calls police after pupils leave derogatory graffiti”

· “Thieves steal presents from under Christmas tree”

· “Surfer sues over stolen wave”

· “Man sues himself”

Rendering