Crime fighters in Iqaluit use social media to find culprits

This print, posted on Facebook’s Iqaluit Rant and Rave page, was reported stolen from Iqaluit’s Frobisher Inn by Tim MacLeod on Feb. 10. (FACEBOOK IMAGE)

Rowena House posted this picture a model wearing her sealskin coat, which was stolen from the Baffin Region Chamber of Commerce building on Feb. 9, hoping the community could find the culprit or even just the coat. (FACEBOOK IMAGE)

It seems that Facebook users in Iqaluit are solving almost as many crimes as the RCMP these days.

Tim MacLeod, the crime-fighting general manager of Nunastar Properties, whose posting of security camera footage on Facebook last month resulted in a number of arrests, says community policing works because of concerned and engaged local citizens.

“The good people in Iqaluit far outnumber the criminals,” MacLeod said in an interview Feb. 13.

“So I think if we can just support each other we can change things.”

MacLeod took to Facebook again Feb. 10 to post security camera footage of the theft of a print from a conference room at the Frobisher Inn — one of a number of properties managed by Nunastar.

“I got instant responses that the print was sold in the Storehouse Bar,” MacLeod said.

By going through footage from different cameras, MacLeod was able to identify the man he suspected of stealing the print and the man who bought it.

But MacLeod’s not the only Iqalungmiut using social media in hopes that the community can help solve petty crimes.

Rowena House posted a picture of a model wearing her waist-length sealskin coat, trimmed with bleached coyote fur, to Facebook after it was stolen from the Baffin Region Chamber of Commerce building on Feb. 9.

“If you see it please contact me or call the RCMP,” House wrote on Facebook.

And Craig Dunphy, whose daughter was working at the Baffin Gas convenience store in the Plateau area when the store was robbed at knife-point, posted a description of the suspect on Facebook on Feb. 10: “Short, wearing all black except for a scarf or neck warmer kinda camo colour.”

And the RCMP seem to be encouraging this evolving internet-based form of community policing, MacLeod said.

“Ya, they support me. They said they’re not allowed to [use social media],” MacLeod said.

In the last week of January, for example, MacLeod used Facebook to successfully recover three snowmobiles, including one that belonged to a co-worker at the Frobisher Inn and which was stolen from a spot near the hotel’s main entrance.

“For god sake’s take it off Facebook!” MacLeod remembered one police officer telling him.

“You didn’t do anything wrong, but we’ve got hundreds of calls and we already arrested a guy, so tell them to stop calling,” MacLeod said the officer told him, laughing.

“And that was only hours after posting on Facebook,” said MacLeod, who recently launched a new Facebook page dedicated to tracking down stolen snowmobiles.

City councillor Noah Papatsie praised MacLeod’s efforts.

“That’s the way it should be, the way to help each other,” Papatsie told Nunatsiaq News.

In a city council meeting in January Papatsie announced his support for a youth curfew — in part, to curb the sort of criminal activity that was affecting Nunastar.

“The curfew would be great for everyone: the city, for businesses, for parents, for kids … As a parent, you have to know where your child is,” Papatsie said in the interview.

But at least one academic who has studied this subject thinks internet-based community policing has both pros and cons, and should be used with caution.

Bonnie Burstow, a veteran University of Toronto professor in the adult education and community development program, has spent her career focusing largely on victimized groups in society.

“I can see assets, you know strengths to this, where people can help and find their stuff,” she said.

“But I can also see both paranoia and victimization of other people happening from it, so it really depends on how it’s handled.”

If not considered carefully by the community, Burstow said, suspects or stolen property matching descriptions posted on Facebook could lead to false accusations — or worse.

For example, Burstow called the description Dunphy posted online of the Baffin Gas store robber, “really, really dangerous.” She explained why.

“Here is an invitation that anyone who is short and happens to be wearing something like he described could get beaten up.”

In the same post, Dunphy warned the suspect: “That was my daughter you piece of shit!!…You better hope you can hide. Or smarter for you…turn your sorry ass in and plead for prison.”

“That would be an example of not community policing, not community anything,” Burstow said, “but an example of individuals who are in pain.”

Burstow added that community policing can also undermine the most fundamental legal principle of Canada’s court system: innocent until proven guilty.

Guilty convictions require a judge or jury to believe, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the suspect committed a crime.

Nunavut defence lawyer James Morton weighed in on the subject in an interview Feb. 17.

“The view is that if you take away somebody’s liberty, somebody’s freedom — and that’s what we’re looking at in criminal law — you shouldn’t do that unless they really are guilty,” he said.

MacLeod, for example, told Nunatsiaq News that the RCMP couldn’t arrest the man identified as having stolen the Frobisher Inn’s print because of the camera angles of the security footage.

In the video, a man, whose face was clearly visible to the camera, can be seen taking the print off the wall and carrying it over to an exit, MacLeod said. The man then disappears from the camera’s view.

A few minutes later a man wearing the exact same clothing, but whose face is not clearly visible to the camera, picks up the painting and exits the building, MacLeod said.

But police told him that a defence lawyer could argue it might not be the same person, he added.

Morton couldn’t comment on this incident, but said reasonable doubt depends a lot on the context of each case.

As an example, Morton said he was involved in a case once where a Sikh man at a wedding was seen on video moments before a crime was committed by a Sikh man wearing the same clothes as the man on the video.

The man in question was wearing a blue suit, a white shirt and blue turban.

“At the Sikh wedding, there were 200 guys wearing a blue suit, a blue turban… but if it was a video of the Northmart [in Iqaluit], it’s not like there’s 200 other Sikhs wearing that, running around Northmart.”

The Crown’s high burden of proof is there to provide protection for suspects, Burstow said, but she would like to see communities transition completely to responsible self-policing — something she’s never seen before.

“I’m a little worried about people putting things on the internet without holding meetings first, so that there’s a general agreement on how we would know what was really stolen, how we would effectively monitor this so that we as a community are proceeding responsibly,” Burstow said.

“Because my sense is if we don’t do it that way, inevitably somebody will be victimized.”

Burstow also said youth curfews are the “exact wrong decision”.

“We shouldn’t be policing our youth, we shouldn’t be treating them as criminals or about to become criminals,” she said.

“We should not be looking at how to further control youth, we should be looking at how to support youth. The danger is the message we’re sending them.”

But Papatsie disagreed. “That sounds like not a parent, to be honest,” he said. “I think a curfew is good because it’s about being a good parent, making sure your child is safe, educating them, helping them grow.”

MacLeod, meanwhile, is keeping the community-policing ball rolling.

A member of Nunastar’s head office in Edmonton planned to visit Iqaluit soon, MacLeod said, to discuss security not only for the company’s properties but to set up a more formal neighbourhood watch program.

Online community policing is a force to be reckoned with, MacLeod added, because of how pervasive internet use is in a small city such as Iqaluit.

“We buy stuff, we sell stuff online, if we’re going to the Legion, it’s posted. If I want to see what’s going on, I click on Facebook… we’re a small, tight-knit community.”