Send in the Clowns!

So the last post dealt with Scary New Police Technology. This post will discuss the scary clowns that are being reported throughout the country - and at URI. First, let me put your mind at ease - we have not discovered any evidence of evil clowns overtaking our campus. However, each year, this internet hoax is resurrected and causes panic to some. How is this related to police technology you ask? Don't worry, we'll get there soon...

Earlier this week URI Police received several calls about people dressed in clown costumes lurking in various areas around the Kingston Campus. Officers responded and were unable to locate any of the suspected clowns. However, this did not stop some students from posting their fears on the web.

Sorry if I scared you with the above clown, but in my research for this blog entry I stumbled upon him - if I had to see it, I figured you should too!

Back to the case, now this is where it gets interesting. Dispatch receives several calls from both concerned students and concerned parents that photos of the URI Clown are all over social media. As supervisor of dispatch, I am notified immediately and I begin to scour social media to see if I can get a glimpse of the elusive URI Clown and help to solve this mystery. I have the most success on Twitter, and a search of "uri clown sightings" found many interesting posts, but not clown pics. Some of the posts I found are below, and I apologize for the colorful language in some of the posts - I just report them like I see them! No names have been changed to protect the innocent - these were public posts with no reasonable expectation of privacy.

Oh boy, no need to get nasty, Jake! Well, you get the idea. I spent some time looking around the web and different social media outlets, and I did not find anything that could solve the URI Clown caper. But I was just one guy, with one computer, poking around the web doing the best I could. What if there was some police technology to assist me in my search???

I'm glad you asked! There is something to help out in just these types of situations (and several others). The product is called Social Sentinel.

On their website SOCIAL SENTINEL, the company explains how:

"The Social Sentinel® service aggregates data via key phrases, hashtags, geofences, our proprietary Local+™ algorithm, and other unique methods of working with meta-data in real-time to help officials identify and mitigate threats, reduce crime, and bring actionable intelligence to evolving situations."

Interestingly enough, URI Police recently had a demo of the software and we were all very impressed with the technology. Basically, Social Sentinel has partnered up with various social media companies, and is able to search specific items that the police enter as key words in their search. In addition to the key word "clown", the police could also have the software key in on other phrases that relate to school violence, drugs, or other potential crimes. 

Check out their website, and let me know if you think a product like Social Sentinel could benefit public safety. Thanks for stopping by!