Reuters reports that YouTube has helped Ontario police find a man they believe to be responsible for a murder at a local night club.
A video posted on the ultra-popular Web site YouTube has helped Canadian police find a man they believe responsible for a murder.
Police in the Southern Ontario city of Hamilton said on Thursday that they uploaded a one-minute, 12-second clip from a surveillance tape onto the video-sharing YouTube site.
The video, which showed suspects arriving at a local nightclub for a Sean Price hip-hop concert, garnered media attention and was viewed more than 30,000 times.
Reuters Pictures
Photo“This is the first time Hamilton police have utilized video web posting in an investigation, and to the best of its knowledge, the first time that law enforcement has ever used it as a direct investigative tool,” Staff Sgt. Jorge Lasso told a news conference.
This whole “Web 2.0″ thing might just be useful, huh?
This reminds me of the “America’s Most Wanted” poster that hangs in the FBI building in Washington DC. That could be really cool if YouTube et al began having a law enforcement section of the website to help with things like this. I know that many people would be interested in viewing footage like this in their area – All of the cop/America’s Most Wanted/etc TV shows are certainly a testament to this, as is this story.