9.11.12

A “Wanted” Facebook post profiling a local thief has inspired people to share it nearly 2,000 times in the hope of bringing him to  justice.

The culprit was captured on CCTV stealing a pair of CDJ-1000 mixing decks worth over £1000 from Garage Nightclub. The club was planning to use the equipment at an upcoming Save the Children gig.

Owners Iain French and Tristan Da Cunha, two well-known names on the Leeds electronic music scene, decided to take justice into their own hands and upload an image of the thief onto Facebook.

The photo was featured alongside the tagline “get the scumbag named and shamed”.

One Facebook user called for the club to “release the hounds” while another commenter called for police to “bang up that low-life”.

The campaign hopes to capitalise on  a recent trend of people using social networking and video streaming websites to publicly shame criminals.

However, databases of criminals, such as convicted paedophiles, have attracted criticism for promoting a ‘lynch mob’ mentality.

Though legal, the police voiced their concern over this kind of  community crime prevention, saying, “Any information taken from the internet and sites such as Facebook should be treated with caution as its authenticity cannot be confirmed.” However, Geraldine Carter, Conservative candidate for West Yorkshire Police and Crime Commissioner, has said in her election statement that “victims should be able to decide the community punishment of offenders”.

Words: Harry Davies