As is frequently the case, many of the comments to this article are horrible.

John F. Gay III is a pig!

Wow. Forget actually teaching kids about internet safety, let's just tell 'em inmates beat off to their pictures!

Sarah Silverman on law enforcement:

Policeman: "Ms. Do you know why I'm writing you this ticket?"

Sarah Silverman: "Because you had a C average in high-school?"

Fact: Violent assault is the lowest it has been in 35 years.

Fact: Reporting and sensationalizing of violent crime is at it's highest.

Fact: People who watch televised news reports on crime or are unaware of the actual number of violent crimes being committed are more likely to vote for increased law enforcement.

Speculation: Fear and intimidation is good for business.

Fact: Domestic abuse among law enforcement is at or among the highest for any profession.

F.T.P.

If the point was to "scare them straight" instead of slut-shame, why were no boys' myspace pages used?

You can't tell me that none of the boys had personal information and pictures up on their sites.

And biancamarissa is right--per usual many of the comments on the news site are pretty horrendous. I think the comment that was most telling was the one that said something to the effect of:

Don't forget the point here. These girls are dressing like prostitues.

Um, I thought the "point" was to teach Internet safety. Oops, I guess that wasn't really the point afterall...

Perphaps this is the most horrible thing that a police officer can do, speaking from person whose father is a marine cop in Hong Kong. Although I can imagine how some of the MySpace stuff is on the edgy, but still if the person isn't intent to search it up, how can u really dig up a info about a person?
[b]Besides, a police possibly giving out an underage info to a sexual predator in prison and that guy is masterbating to her picture, isnt that a huge legal issue already? If the polica office's word is truth and that girl is sexual assault, he is already commiting crime becausing by "a person causes the rape by a third person". [/b]

Not at all surprised to read this entry, after all police don't actively investigate crimes committed against sex trade workers so why should we surprised when they try to enforce the whole be a good girl, keep yourself pure ideology?

Not at all surprised to read this entry, after all police don't actively investigate crimes committed against sex trade workers so why should we surprised when they try to enforce the whole be a good girl, keep yourself pure ideology?

"Scared straight" programs are scary, just like "tough love" is tough.

There's a big difference between blaming the victim, and educating potential victims. Many years ago rental car companies eliminated the "Hertz" stickers which marked their cars after a rash of carjackings which targeted rental cars on the presumption that such drivers were tourists. To say that the rental car stickers made the drivers a mark is not to blame the drivers. Its just a fact.

Everyone needs to understand the behaviors which make them more likely to be targeted & taken advantage of by criminals.

A police officer gave details of a teenage girl to a convicted sex offender for masturbatory purposes, and then tells her (in front of everyone she knows) that this guy is going to hunt her down and rape her once he's released, because she's a slut?

My work internet won't let me see the comments, somehow, but if there's anyone out there that thinks this might somehow not be worth firing (and probably arresting) him over, then I pity them.

This guy was way out of line. There would be better ways to go about this.

I myself have used scared straight tactics, once a girl in a chat room gave us her phone number and full name unsolicited. We drew a map to her house and freaked her out.

Most recently I joked about telling my little cousin's parents when he admitted to smoking weed on his facebook profile. I'm pretty sure he's never even seen weed, because no one who actually engages in illegal activity thinks it is cool to tell the entire internet about it. (I don't think I made much of an impression. But at least he's been warned. 16 year olds are the worst.)

Regarding that last point about blaming the victim, I think that cases like this are a little different. I have a hard time sympathizing for the drama that young people get themselves into for putting stupid, dumb asinine bullshit on their myspaces/facebooks. It's one of those social darwinism things, really - if you are just so postmodern you can't understand the boundaries of privacy, you deserve that shitstorm headed your way. I hear all the time about teen girls at the school my mother teaches at living out some interbutt drama during school hours and have absolutely zero sympathy. The school should take a hardline approach by blaming them for behavior they consciously enabled.

Obviously, being predated on is a different matter, but even then, you have to wonder what goes through the mind of some people that put themselves in such a dangerous position online. Not much, apparently.

sly:

That Hertz example is not even remotely analogous.

1) Attacks on that specific group were actually on the rise; this is not the case with sexual or other violent assault in general.

2) Tourists were not told to cease to be tourists, or made to be ashamed of being tourists, nor were they lied to about Hertz giving out their hotel reservation information to thieves. Hertz simply removed a sticker/tag from cars. This was an act completely invisible to the target group.

And "scared straight" implies the subject is in the wrong. Those programs are intended to teach juvenile offenders that the minor criminality they are currently engaged in is where most people in prison began. Your argument comparing the two is absolutely making the statement that these kids are doing something illegal or otherwise "wrong", classic victim blaming.

"Tough Love" is another spurious association. "Tough Love", like "scared straight" programs is designed or intended for kids who have been engaged in asocial or criminal conduct and whom have been unresponsive to compassionate education. You don't start with "tough love", you start with factual information. Unless you're a sick sadistic asshole.

Shinobi: "because no one who actually engages in illegal activity thinks it is cool to tell the entire internet about it."

Is this your first week online? Allow me to direct you to YouTube, where people smoke dope in church:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1-GSQvWjkY

or Give drugs to toddlers:

http://ie.youtube.com/watch?v=Hn30meB1Dvw&feature=related

And a myriad of other asshattery, including assault and vandalism.

MySpace is no different.

tofu.mon.amour:

You know who else I have a problem with? People who don't lock their doors. Fuck those guys, when someone robs them or does a violent home invasion I just say to myself "Hey, Social Darwinism, they should have known better. And sympathy is expensive so I won't waste it on those jerks."

Oh, and women out by themselves at any time, they must have it coming too. And uppity coloreds who speak up about civil rights when they are being oppressed! I mean thy should have known better, if they were being oppressed they you would think they would know it was dangerous to speak up about it.

Social Darwinism is a system that justifies the oppression of the powerless as a "natural state". It's also been co-opted by various eugenics movements and racial hate groups. But if that's the philosophy you want to run with, enjoy it.

Unless you were confusing it with Objectivism (Ayn Rand), which I'm not a fan of either but it's not so absolutely disgusting as Social Darwinism.

Whoa, whoa, what the fuck are you talking about? Sorry if that wasn't clear enough, but I was only using social Darwinism snarkily. My only point is that this doing stupid stuff publicly on the internet (har har) is NOT the same as blaming a woman for dressing sexily, getting drunk, and being raped. Which, when the poster says "blaming the victim", sounds like its being equated to.

I honestly don't even have anything to add. I just wanted to respond by saying how fucking horrifying this is. Even if it was much more benign, without the sexism and slut-shaming, singling individuals out in front of the entire school to analyze their mistakes is completely inappropriate. But this is SO wrong. I know this guy won't get fired, but hopefully he's at least relegated to desk work.

tofu.mon.amour:

Ok, I'll take your word that you were kidding about SD.

But you're still going with victim blaming. You're saying that even to a degree the perfectly legal conduct of these potential victims somehow acts to mitigate the responsibility of a potential attacker. This is no different from people who say women who are dressed nice or have been drinking share responsibility for attacks.

I may be safer from being mugged if I never leave my home, but I'm not sharing the blame for a mugging just because I could have possibly avoided it through agoraphobia.

Also there is absolutely no proof that having a "sexy" picture on MySapce increases the odds of being a victim. But by claiming thee is people who wish to control the, again, perfectly legal behavior of others but who have been unable to do so through other means are finding a way to scare people into behaving in a manner they find more acceptable.

This is no different that when people lie for voted by saying "A vote for Obama is a vote for terror", it's not true but they rely on the poor research skills or downright intellectual laziness of the subject to allow them to get away with it.

And having a cop do the job of a parent or an educator is one of the first steps to establishing a police state.

I'm not even going to try to defend what the officer did, however I will make this point.

People (Teens included. They should know better) need to be responsible for their actions online. Obviously I'm not saying "They were asking for it", however I am saying that doing stupid things will come back to haunt you, and Posting private information online is incredibly stupid! Absolutely nothing you do online is private, the moment you connect consider your computer a open book, because that is pretty much what it is.

Here's what I consider to be a good example. Chances are, some of you have heard of the group 'anonymous'. They stage 'raids' on websites they disagree with, and one of their biggest intimidation tactics is the posting of private and personal information online. Most of this isn't gathered by doing any 'super hacking', it's found going through peoples whois information and scouring social networking sites. Like myspace, like facebook.

Bottom line, no one asks to be raped, killed, maimed, etc etc. However if you can't be intelligent about how you use the net, maybe you shouldn't use it at all.

I'm talking in a more general sense about what people put on their personal pages. I also don't think that having a sexy picture increases your odds of being attacked, nor do I have any data about what does. Nor do I really know what, without actual online contact with the victim, spurs sexual predators to attack someone. But - correct me if I'm wrong - I bet that most internet-based predations involve the complicity of the victim, either by engaging in a dialogue with the creeper or not being smart about restricting their personal information like any normal person.

To me, this doesn't mitigate the responsibility of the attacker, but it does place blame on the victim for being a stupid fucker. This IS different then leaving your house or any other setup for a conventional rape/assault/whatever. Because the victim consciously chose to unnecessarily and without good reason share the personal info that allowed her attacker to predate on her.

But even then, still, this fits into a larger framework of how teenagers are dipshits whose online stupidities constantly spill out into the real world at school or what have you. It's all because they simply don't understand what boundaries are, and the confounding thing is that there's NO excuse for them not to. You go cybering in a chatroom or answer a craigslist ad and end up meeting someone and getting raped, well, don't say nobody told you so.

And your last quip about the police state is just absurd. A police officer is in a perfect place to explain this to someone as they're the ones that have to deal with it frequently. Just not like this failtard who should be arrested for putting a young girl at risk.

Let me rephrase that Logrus.

"No one who actually engages in illegal activity thinks it is cool to tell the entire internet about it, unless they are a complete idiot."

Better? I guess I just had hopes that no one in my family was actually that stupid. Fortunately, they are not blood relatives.

John: Sorry for the digression here but just to clarify:

Of the very few directed attacks Anon has done the most notable was on a young wannabe who asked Anon to get dirt on his ex girlfriend. He petitioned channers and Anon to go after her. So in turn some associates hacked him and pranked him (some were a bit menacing about it, but at no time was he physically contacted other than via telephone). And this was not an official act of Anon. It was not done with approval or consensus, just that nobody ever said "don't do that".

Mostly Anon does culture jamming exercises (like flooding 2nd life or other cyber-graffiti) and trying to expose Scientology as a dangerous cult.

Anonymous is very much an anarchistic community, or a cooperative.

Otherwise I agree that it's unwise to have too much faith in the security of your information. I just don't think it's fair to call Anon out or associate them with victimizing people like this. That's not what Anon is really about, that's just what FOX News wants people to believe.

Where was this girl's mother, or parents, for that matter? Why aren't they monitoring her internet usage? The police officer was very wrong to do this publicly. If he really cared, he would have contacted her parents privately. The embarrassment will probably stick with her for a long time, for better or worse. Common sense starts at home...sounds like her family could use some!

It's also quite bothersome that he singled out girls...boys are doing these sorts of things too.

And why would a convicted sexual predator be allowed have internet access in prison anyway? Or maybe the officer just showed the felon a printout of the page? The article doesn't specify. My head is going to f*cking explode if it is true that I am paying for sex offenders to spank it to teen girls whilst they surf MySpace.

This is exactly why I don't live in Wyoming anymore. Well, maybe not exactly, but close enough.

If anyone wants to write a letter to the police chief, his address is cpdchief@cheyennepd.org . And the department's website is here: http://www.cheyennecity.org/index.asp?NID=1007 . They bill themselves as a "progressive agency of 106 sworn officers and 27 civilian employees." Progressive my ass.

I wrote the chief a letter. I would not want an officer with views like this dealing with my friend or family member's rape or domestic violence case.

If anyone wants to write a letter to the police chief, his address is cpdchief@cheyennepd.org . And the department's website is here: http://www.cheyennecity.org/index.asp?NID=1007 . They bill themselves as a "progressive agency of 106 sworn officers and 27 civilian employees." Progressive my ass.

I wrote the chief a letter. I would not want an officer with views like this dealing with my friend or family member's rape or domestic violence case.

Anyway, I still think it is important for educators and parents to teach kids about the dangers of sharing information on the internet. Once it is there, it is there forever, and anyone can see it. There is no guarantee of privacy, and the internet is full of dangerous people.

HOWEVER I do not think this was the appropriate way to go about it.

If anyone wants to write a letter to the police chief, his address is cpdchief@cheyennepd.org . And the department's website is here: http://www.cheyennecity.org/index.asp?NID=1007 . They bill themselves as a "progressive agency of 106 sworn officers and 27 civilian employees." Progressive my ass.

I wrote the chief a letter. I would not want an officer with views like this dealing with my friend or family member's rape or domestic violence case.

JennyP:

I think the whole thing about him showing it to a predator was bullshit scare tactics.

Cops will lie to you to get you to comply, it's pretty much a part of the job. "You have to show me ID.", "You can't photograph me.", "No your honor, Mr. King was clearly lunging for my fellow officers.", etc.

@Logrus

I found the fox news story hilarious, but not factual ;). I wasn't calling anonymous out, I frequent many of their sites and find some of their antics incredibly funny. However the point I was trying to make is that people just don't go on a 'hacking spree' and find out your personal data, it's generally only going to be there if you or someone else puts it out.

Perhaps a better example would be the 'Xbox moron' story that took place maybe 6 months ago.

What?

Inmates watching MySpace?

When their phone calls are regularly tapped and they are forbidden to use cell phones, they are allowed internet access?

If this official was corrupt enough to share web information with the inmates regarding minors under his care, who knows what else he does for them. An investigation should be under way for him. Pronto

If anyone wants to write a letter to the police chief, his address is cpdchief@cheyennepd.org . And the department's website is here: http://www.cheyennecity.org/index.asp?NID=1007 . They bill themselves as a "progressive agency of 106 sworn officers and 27 civilian employees." Progressive my ass.

I wrote the chief a letter. I would not want an officer with views like this dealing with my friend or family member's rape or domestic violence case.

Grr. Sorry for posting the same message 80 times. Technical problems.

I can't help but think about the girls (and boys) in the audience that day who had already been sexually assaulted. That's one of the problems with pulling this 'scared straight' thing on large groups, instead of just targetting those at risk (like taking a group of kids arrested for DUIs to the morgue). You never know who is in the audience, or what they have gone through. How is this slut-shaming going to come across to that girl in the third row who was raped last week?

Shinobi:

"No one who actually engages in illegal activity thinks it is cool to tell the entire internet about it, unless they are a complete idiot."

How many people do you know who are happy to tell the world that they've engaged in illegal copyright infringement?

No one who actually engages in illegal activity that is likely to be prosecuted thinks it is cool to tell the entire internet about it, unless they are a complete idiot.

As someone who is simply horrified by what my nieces post on their myspace pages, I do think that teens need to be made to understand what they are doing when they post things on the internet.

My rather gentle criticism of one of my niece's photos caused her to not even want to speak to me for a while, which showed that she really did not understand what I was trying to say, or what impact the photo might have on her life.

I do not agree with the way the police officer handled this. I don't think that there should have been any mention of "sluttiness." I do not think that individuals should have been singled out, and their pages reviewed in-depth.

However, perhaps I would have no problem with a slideshow of everyone at the assembly's myspace pages playing the background, and speech about how ANYONE with access to the internet can see it. Maybe even displaying a fake page, containing some of the common/average things that teens put on them that are dangerous, and talking about that in-depth would be useful.

Being careful about what information you post is one thing, but I have a little trouble believing that what you're wearing in your picture really has a great deal of bearing on whether some incarcerated sex offender who has mysteriously been granted access to MySpace gets it in his head to find and rape you. I'm pretty sure that even a guy who's just been paroled and is already out trolling for potential victims is going to be looking for an easy target location-, age- and accessability-wise, not clicking randomly from profile to profile until he finds a girl in a low-cut halter top and only then checking to see whether she lists her hometown and phone number. Which makes the "well, you're asking for it with that outfit" conversation absolutely as irrelevant in this scenario as it is with any other sexual assault. As ever, it's not an issue of safety, it's an issue of preconceived notions of what "good girls" act like.

It's interesting to see what the word "slutty" means to different people. The article says nothing about the girls' clothing. The only reason given for considering one a "slut" (as far as I could tell) was this:

April Rigg, a Windsor High senior, said her MySpace page was also put on display, though she was not at the assembly.

"Me and my best friend are in a lot of those pictures. We have our arms around each other and he was saying that I was touching her," Rigg said other students told her.

Yet many of the comments keep referring to the clothing. Did I miss something?

"However, perhaps I would have no problem with a slideshow of everyone at the assembly's myspace pages playing the background, and speech about how ANYONE with access to the internet can see it. Maybe even displaying a fake page, containing some of the common/average things that teens put on them that are dangerous, and talking about that in-depth would be useful."

I agree. I remember seeing a film made by students at my college; it was thoughtful, provocative, and was able to push toward more subdued internet posting than simply putting up a picture of a girl in a sexual pose and slut-shaming her. It was really a great way to make it clear that people -like campus security and administrators- had access to what many students considered a closed network (the film focused mainly on Facebook), and how pictures and descriptions of actions could be used as reason enough to bust a party or to influence hiring decisions after college.

If the officers had gone more that route, I would have limited problem -especially if they didn't pick out certain girls to harass. But the fact is that this very probably traumatized some of those girls -and not into not putting pictures up on the internet but into not trusting the police.

Would it be too hard to educate men and boys to respect women? Perhaps that should be included in any presentation about Internet Safety. Oh what am I thinking? That would be too hard! It's so much easier for this Puritan ethos to condemn girls for "dressing like prostitutes" and then blame them for anything that happens to them.

another issue is that the officer is legitimizing the most common excuse for rape that rape apologists and rapists use...the victim was asking for it. It is demeaning and insulting and perpetuates the dangerous myth that respectable women are NEVER raped. When it comes to educating teens about rape prevention and internet safety, the point should be made that everyone can be a potential victim.

I sincerely hope the Officer was kidding when he said he shared the page with a sex offender...