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Police Using YouTube to Catch Killers

Posted by Zonk on Sat Oct 07, 2006 09:41 PM
from the what-can-it-not-do dept.
The Internet Government The Courts News
Accommodate Students writes "The BBC is reporting on Greater Manchester police's attempts to use YouTube to catch the killers of the 15 year old, Jessie James. The video features a message from Jessie's mother Barbara Reid and sister Rosemary. BBC radio news has said this is the first time the police force have used YouTube in this way to catch criminals." Update: 10/08 07:40 GMT by Z : Sorry, misunderstood the situation. Thanks for the clarification.
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  • So I'm not the only one? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 07 2006, @09:42PM (#16352273)
    I love The Killers. There's all sorts of videos, interviews and other performances available on YouTube. Just search for The Killers [youtube.com].
    • and this Mail is totally unrelated to that rather awful rag the Daily Mail (whose Sunday version is called the Mail on Sunday as opposed to this one that's the Sunday Mail).

      The Sunday Mail is a scottish paper.

      We have a few oddly named papers in the UK. The Sunday Sun is a local sunday newspaper for Newcastle area and has no relation to Rupert Murdoch's The Sun (their Sunday version is News of the World).

      I just thought I'd clear that up for anyone who seen 'Mail' and was wondering why the style was different
    • The Sunday Mail is the Sunday edition of the Daily Record, a Scottish tabloid newspaper commonly seen turning yellow on the dashboard of rusty Ford Transits at building sites all over the country. Often to be seen alongside half-empty bottles of Irn Bru.

  • More apropos to ask... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Deadstick (535032) on Saturday October 07 2006, @09:57PM (#16352339)
    ...why we in the States would not consider it noteworthy.

    rj

    • It's in another country?
      We got lots of guns and shootings?
      Mainstream Media is currently in the election story arc (and with this Foley guy, well, it's all sweet cash for them)?

      Anyway, we're getting a deluge of death reports from Iraq so... you know, back of the line and all that. :-/

      • Re:Pick all that apply (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 07 2006, @10:25PM (#16352471)
        You would not consider it newsworthy in the States because it's not a middle class caucasian girl and is not being shown around the clock on CNN.

        (This is not flamebait. Think about it for a second)
    • because the victim wasn't a prepubescent beauty queen being dressed up by her parents and pranced around like a stripper?

  • Noteworthy... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    There's nothing *special* about it. Murder is still considered noteworthy in itself here in Britain...

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by rsidd (6328)
      And in the rest of the world. Here in Chennai (India), burglaries are reported in the newspaper.
      • Yeah, I've always wondered... do you (USA-sians) guys cover *all* the previous days murders on the news (list their names?), or just local murders, or do you just ignore anyone who wasn't rich/famous? Murders here (Australia) are usually the first to third story on the news..
        • It is all relative, so it really depends on where you live. If you live in Southern California, they might not even bother mentioning any murders save for the really sensational ones... But you are talking about a metro area (SoCal) with more people (24 million [wikipedia.org]) then all of Australia(20 million [cia.gov])... I doubt Australias national news news reports on Perths murders (except for the really sensational ones), but I could be wrong.

          If you live in a smaller metro like here in Grand Rapids/Western MI a metro of about .75 million, all murders definitely make the news (as do the followups on who, what, when, and what the sentence was).

          It is all about scale my friend.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Zone-MR (631588) *
      It's not that...

      In any country with > 60M people, it's sadly inevitable that murders will happen on almost a weekly basis. However in many countries you'll rarely see murder covered prominently on the national news. This isn't because they don't consider murder important. This isn't because murder never happens there, or happens so often that the public no longer cares....

      Looking at the UK news you'll regularly see headlines about mothers mutillating their babies, creepy guys raping 6 year old kids, and

  • It's important because... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by lxt (724570) on Saturday October 07 2006, @10:00PM (#16352355) Journal
    The simple fact that a 15 year old boy getting shot gets such media attention in Britain (when compared to similar events in America) is noteworthy. Sure, the USA is a far larger country, but even at a State level you don't really see the same kind of news reporting when it comes to these kind of shootings.
    • Sure, the USA is a far larger country, but even at a State level you don't really see the same kind of news reporting when it comes to these kind of shootings.

      But then again, we have states that are larger than Britain.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by Cato (8296)
        Not in terms of population, which is what matters in terms of crime newsworthiness - the UK has 60 million inhabitants.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Shivetya (243324)
      you obviously don't watch local news.

  • In some places, murder is still news (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 07 2006, @10:01PM (#16352357)
    Other than the obvious and regrettably tragedy of the situation, why is this case noteworthy?

    Well, in some countries, like the UK, there aren't so many murders everyday throughout the year that the populace has lost all sense of empathy when a human life is taken. All it takes is for there to be an unusual circumstance and it will become big news.

    I guess in some other countries, where bizzare murders and school/work shootings happen all the time and people are bored of it, people would rather hear about Angela Jolie and Brad Pitt.

    • Re:In some places, murder is still news (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 07 2006, @10:09PM (#16352391)
      What!? Why!? Did something happen to Brangelina that I missed???

    • Re:In some places, murder is still news (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Dan East (318230) on Saturday October 07 2006, @10:39PM (#16352515) Homepage
      Although it serves as a model example of flamebait, your post doesn't answer the question. The UK has averaged close to 3 murders a day for the last several years. 95% of those murders don't make headlines in the UK. So, Other than the obvious and regrettably tragedy of the situation, why is this case noteworthy?

      Dan East

      • Re:In some places, murder is still news (Score:5, Funny)

        by heinousjay (683506) on Saturday October 07 2006, @10:44PM (#16352537) Journal
        Shhhh, you aren't allowed to answer a slam of the US with anything approaching logic.
      • They certainly make the news in local papers. The 5% or so you are talking about are the ones that make it to the national papers.
      • A few reasons:

        Gun crime's on the increase in the UK (or so they'll have us believe, anyway), particularly in the rougher parts of the big cities. There's more illegally-held weapons in circulation these days, and what what particularly scares Joe Public, though he won't like to admit it, is that it's mostly young black people packing heat. Of course, when a mad old white man shoots a fleeing kid in the back with an illegally-held shotgun, the public clamours to have him released (go look up Tony Martin).

        As
    • For what it's worth, this was reported by the BBC in '03.

      When guns were available in England they were seldom used in crime. A government study for 1890-1892 found an average of one handgun homicide a year in a population of 30 million. But murder rates for both countries are now changing. In 1981 the American rate was 8.7 times the English rate, in 1995 it was 5.7 times the English rate, and by last year it was 3.5 times. With American rates described as "in startling free-fall" and British rates as of O

      • Re:In some places, murder is still news (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Attaturk (695988) on Saturday October 07 2006, @11:55PM (#16352809) Homepage
        It should also be noted that the BBC article you quoted was written entirely by an American with a book out: "Joyce Malcolm, Professor of History, Bentley College, US. Author of Guns & Violence: the English Experience. Senior Advisor, MIT Security Studies Program"

        We British people do so love learning about guns and the "English Experience" from pro-gun Americans. ;-)

        In other words, published by the BBC it may be, but it's also a gun lobbyist's sales pitch on the idea of Brits embracing american gun culture so please don't take it out of context and please don't take it as any indication of the British culture and/or its attitude towards guns.

        The simple fact of the matter is that, by and large, we don't like guns here. We don't like people having guns and we don't even like our police force to have guns. If we had our way the army would still be equipped with swords, which you can still run away from by the way. ;-)

        The reason this story was both shocking and "noteworthy" was because the views expressed by Ms. Malcolm and her ilk are anathema to most Brits.
        We may well experience three murders a day on average in this country of roughly 65 million but I suspect that very, very few of them involve innocent children being shot on the street.

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by Attaturk (695988)
          Just by way of reference, according to this pdf [homeoffice.gov.uk] :"Firearms are used in a very small proportion of all recorded crimes. Including air weapons, firearms were used in 0.40 per cent of all recorded crimes in 2001/02. Firearms other than air weapons were used in 0.18 per cent of all recorded crimes."

        • Yes, I realized that it was written by an American with a book to sell. I tried not to touch the "Brits should have guns" bit, but I thought the rising British violent crime rate was notable. America still ha(s|d) 3.5 times as many homicides, but that still suggests that a lot of people are getting killed in England. *shrug*

          Of course, that doesn't matter, because you're not nearly as bad as the savage Americans.

          • The amusing thing is, most gun crime is caused by unoriginal people trying to copy american gang culture. So it has little to do with the sudden illegality of guns, and more to do with a growing copycat gang culture since the ban was brought in. We've certainly had no more school shootings since the ban.

            You don't have that, "I need a gun because I don't trust my neighbours and might need to shoot them" attitude, instead you get the, "I'm in a gang and deal drugs so need a gun to shoot other gang members who
        • very few of them involve innocent children being shot on the street.

          Not that they dont deserve it. About 9 in each 10 crimes I have heard about since I came to the UK are 14-16 year old kids doing some kind of maniatic thing to pedestrians.

          A friend of mine was attacked (with gum guns) in the middle of the street at daylight by these bastards. And when I arrived people warned me to be aware of the teens as they are the most dangerous of all. It seems UK laws are pretty soft on these "kids" and parents just d
          • Actually, I find British teenagers on the whole to be better-behaved and more courteous than British adults on the whole. They get a bad press, and much of it undeserved - it tends to be just youthful exuberance blown out of proportion, rather than downright nastiness. For instance, I've never had to stop a teenager beating someone up for taking too long to buy a train ticket, which I had to do with a respectable-looking man in his late forties a few weeks ago. I've never had a teenager step out of his car
      • What I'd like to see statistics on gun crime that show an actual breakdown of the figures:

        1) how many gun related deaths are criminal on criminal
        2) how many civilians are killed/attacked in their homes, and how often have these civilians been saved by their guns
        3) how often do people have their own guns used against them
        4) how many gun deaths are due to accidents

        and how these compare to the UK.

        I think something that is an anathema here is the idea of carrying around a gun to prevent mugging or to protect yo

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by RossumsChild (941873)
      The entire US is not devoid of empathy, and I find your implication otherwise offensive. UK Population: 60 Million. US population: 295 Million. (Granted those are the CIA #s so they're likely wrong ;) In short: there are more of us to go around, so country-wide news can't focus the same way it can in a (much) smaller country. Even if we have exactly the same per-capita murder rate (last I saw was USA:UK 4.2:3.3), we would have five times the number of events to try and report. As it is, factoring in d
      • But what sort of area do your newspapers cover? Presumably it isn't the whole country. We have "national" newspapers which ostensibly cover the whole of the UK. But Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have their own editions of these papers which take most of the news from the national version, and replace some stories with others which are of more interest to people within that part of the UK. Also, these three countries have their own newspapers which tend to be more popular than the national papers.
    • I guess in some other countries, where bizzare murders and school/work shootings happen all the time and people are bored of it, people would rather hear about Angela Jolie and Brad Pitt.

      After living in L.A. for the past year and watching the news fairly regularly, I'd have to say that's about right. It's either celebs or car chases.

  • YouTube Link (Score:5, Informative)

    by Bueller_007 (535588) on Saturday October 07 2006, @10:06PM (#16352383)
    Here's the video in question:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RM6HmxlU-hI [youtube.com]
  • This is apparently related to the hatespeak-related jailing we discussed on Saturday. As this is obviously getting a lot of media attention over there, can someone from the UK enlighten us? Other than the obvious and regrettably tragedy of the situation, why is this case noteworthy?

    How so?

    No where do any of the articles mention anything about race or hate in this particular killing.
    Is the submitter of this story attempting to make things up?
    TFA mentions guns and GANGS, which would suggest that it is proba

  • very simple (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Trailer Trash (60756) on Saturday October 07 2006, @10:16PM (#16352427) Homepage
    A large percentage of murder has a motive, and the killer and victim know each other. This case is particularly heinous for these reasons:

    1. The victim apparently didn't know the killers
    2. He was apparently chosen solely based on race
    3. The killers are still at large, and there's no reason to believe that they wouldn't do this again

    People don't think too much when drug dealers are killing each other, because most of us don't hang out with that crowd and aren't really affected by it. That's why a killing like this brings in much more attention.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by pair-a-noyd (594371)
      2. He was apparently chosen solely based on race.

      And from where did you glean this information?

      I've read every related article on the BBC and not one mentions anywhere that this killing was race and or hate driven.

      If you would read the articles at the BBC yourself you would see that the police and everyone else is calling this a gang related black on black crime.

      Are you trying to foment racial hatred towards whites?

      Post links to the articles citing that this was race/hate related please.
    • I think you may be getting confused with a different murder of a 15 year old, in Glasgow, where the boy was randomly taken and killed in revenge for someone being killed of the killer's ethnicity. The accused are already in court for that one (and it was purely racially motivated, and nothing else).

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by ctid (449118)
      You're confusing two murders, probably because the Slashdot editor has got himself confused. The Anthony Walker murder happened in Liverpool and was a racist murder - he was waiting at a bus-stop with his white girlfriend and his cousin and some white kids took exception and murdered him with an ice-pick. The killers are not still at large, although they were on the run for a little while afterwards. The Jesse James murder happened in Manchester (a completely different city, 35 miles from Liverpool). It was
  • It's a big story because..

    a) it occurred in a crime ridden area of Manchester
    b) .. where the usual victims aren't young kids
    c) .. who are supposedly innocent
    d) .. who are supposedly 'god fearing'
    e) .. who are not white

    That is.. it totally doesn't fit the profile.

    It'd be the equivalent of a white beauty queen living in Compton getting hacked with a machete while walking along the street. That would be big news in the US whereas gun-related child murders seem to be a weekly event, unlike in the UK.
      • Apparently some sicko deciding to execute girls because otherwise he might molest them sexually and then commiting suicide only buys a couple of days of news coverage.

        To be fair, how much coverage does it need? Unless new developments occur, most news should expire within a day or two.. otherwise it's not really 'new'.

  • Is Zonk an idiot? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Stalyn (662) on Saturday October 07 2006, @11:47PM (#16352775) Homepage Journal
    This is apparently related to the hatespeak-related jailing we discussed on Saturday.

    Jesse James != Anthony Walker. The only way they are related is that both murder victims are black.

    Other than the obvious and regrettably tragedy of the situation, why is this case noteworthy?

    What did Stalin say, "A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic"? So how this particular case different than the thousands of others who die regularly? I dont know but that sure is a shitty way to look at the world.
  • This sure sounds like a Black on Black killing. Had it been somewhere a little to the East of Greater Manchester I might've suspected it was a White on Black racist killing, but not where it happened.
  • I'm only half kidding, either. Given that YouTube inhabitants are usually only slightly more sane than your average MySpace user, I suspect it won't be long before spoof or remix videos start cropping up.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by EVil Lawyer (947367)
      I think you've missed the point. The story about YouTube is separate from the story about the murder. The YouTube angle is News for Nerds, and makes sense to be posted on slashdot. The question from the editor was more like "why is this murder case important enough to garner so much media attention, such that the police would go to the extent of using YouTube to try to catch the criminals?" That's not a commentary on the relevance or importance of the YouTube story.
      • The question from the editor was more like "why is this murder case important enough to garner so much media attention, such that the police would go to the extent of using YouTube to try to catch the criminals?"

        I don't know why using Youtube is an indication of importance. It costs nothing and anyone can do it. It's easier than running off fliers and handing them out in hte street. If they'd put it on broadcast TV, that would be making it important.

    • Perhaps they consider the overreaction to the case to be newsworthy, though the original story shouldn't have been.

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