Remember this important suggestion. The next time you go around town bashing in mailboxes with a baseball bat, do not take pictures of your results with your own cell phone. And, do not send or post a Picture Message showing you, the mailbox, and the bat!
It seems that one should never overestimate the intelligence of some criminals with a cell-phone camera. It would seem that criminals like to take pictures of themselves and then they distribute them. The Wall Street Journal reported some interesting cases:
- Debra Collins, the assistant state attorney in Connecticut, says she obtained restitution payments for dozens of residents whose mailboxes had been destroyed with baseball bats. The evidence: The perpetrators -- some local high school students -- had posted camera-phone pictures of the deed on the MySpace Web site.
- Pamela Rogers, a McMinnville, Tenn., middle-school gym teacher went to jail for having a sexual relationship with a 13-year-old student. She was released on probation after six months and ordered to avoid contact with her victim. But within weeks, she sent the boy a camera-phone video of herself dancing in a bikini.
- A juvenile was convicted on weapons charges based on cellphone images of him brandishing a rifle at night on the roof of a school building.
And, this doesn't seem like an unusual circumstance. In the small city of Nashua, N.H., one prosecutor estimated to the Journal that cellphone photos provide useful evidence 40 or 50 times a year.
"We pray for those kinds of cases," says Ms. Collins.
Subscribe by Email
