Facebook is used by drug, gun and human trafficking gangs to organize, intimidate and brag. Some police say they’re glad, from an investigatory perspective, that social media giants don’t always kick the crews off their platforms.
Facebook says it doesn't allow street gangs on its platform, but the police say they organize, brag and recruit on the platform. But some investigators are happy for them to stay on social media, as it makes their work that much easier.
was asked to provide data on her Cash App account, it showed multiple transfers of between $3 and $5 for “paperwork,” investigators said. Across various social sites, “these gang members are advertising, they're broadcasting what they do, and it's helping us with identifying them,” says David Auner, who oversees gang investigations at the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.
The cases highlight how federal and local law enforcement capitalize on gangs’ use of social media platforms. Some police, in fact, say they would rather Facebook and other social media sites didn’t intervene and moderate content or messages posted by gangsters, though they’d like to prevent abuse on the social media site at the same time. “Thank Christ for social media,” says Daniel Linskey, a former superintendent-in-chief of the Boston Police Department and now a consultant at Kroll.