Crime & Safety
Cedar Park Suspect Nabbed Through Bolstered Police Social Media Crime-Solving Tactics
The man arrested thought he was talking online to someone he could be buds with, inviting the officer to 'smoke a bowl together.'
CEDAR PARK, TX -- The local man charged with illegally selling guns last week was ensnared by police as part of a growing trend of law enforcement using social media to pose as people wanting to engage in nefarious activity.
Last week, 34-year-old Jessie McNair was arrested after having unwittingly struck up an online friendship with the offier at the other end of the connection, the Austin American-Statesman reports.
McNair didn't know the man was an officer, but a potential client: "I just got caught up on a pretty picture on Facebook," McNair told a radio station.
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The Statesman notes the arrest was executed as part of an increasingly used tactic by police. According to a police affidavit cited by the newspaper, the undercover officer credited with the arrest often uses a fictitious online social media account to catch culprits.
"The purpose of the fictitious social media account is for surveillance and research purposes, as well as being in contact with criminal activity spread through social media,” the police affidavit reads.
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Austin police Sgt. Maurice Forshee, who helps lead the Metro Tactical Unit that caught McNair, told the Statesman police regularly comb Facebook, Craigslist, Backpage.com and the Facebook group “ATX Sell My Stuff,” which was formerly called “ATX Sell My Guns.”
“When we do our investigation, we leave no stone unturned, and everything’s on social media,” Forshee said. “It really is crazy what people broadcast," he told the Statesman.
That trend reached into Cedar Park last week with the arrest of the gun merchant. On Aug. 31, McNair reached out to the officer he believed to be budding friend, proposing they “smoke a bowl together,” according to the arrest affidavit.
The officer “developed a relationship with McNair through this fictitious social media account, and a conversation about trading firearms began to take place,” the affidavit reads.
The long arm of the law has now extended to the reaches of the Internet.
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