By Justin Fenton
The Baltimore Sun
BALTIMORE — The role of social media in police encounters is getting fresh attention in the wake of the fatal shooting this week of Korryn Gaines by police in Baltimore County.
Police attempting to take Gaines into custody on an open warrant said she pulled a shotgun and made threats. As she posted video to Facebook during the encounter, Baltimore County police said they asked the popular social media site to deactivate her accounts.
Gaines was later fatally shot, while her 5-year-old son was also struck by a bullet.
Social media users are increasingly pulling out their phones to record and upload interactions with police, and the recent advent of live-streaming video has added a new dynamic to incidents as they unfold. One of the most well-known incidents occurred in Minnesota, where the girlfriend of Philando Castile immediately started live broadcasting and narrating to viewers after a police officer fatally shot her boyfriend.
Baltimore County police took a rare move, however, when they sought to shut down Gaines’ account. Police said her social media postings were complicating negotiators’ efforts to end the situation peacefully.
“Followers were encouraging her not to comply with negotiators’ requests that she surrender peacefully. You can see the utility of taking that action” to shut down the account, Baltimore County Police Chief James Johnson said. He said investigators also requested that the content on her page be preserved for evidentiary purposes.
To critics, Gaines, whose previous social media postings show she was highly distrustful of police, was taking video to keep herself safe and preserve a record of what was taking place.
“Facebook helped Baltimore police kill #KorrynGaines in the dark. Letting it sink in,” wrote the artist Ferrari Sheppard on Twitter.
Baltimore County police said the Gaines case was the first in which they have asked that an account be deactivated during an “exigent” circumstance.
“We do expect that these requests will become more frequent now that livestreaming has become a part of everyday life,” said spokeswoman Elise Armacost.
Facebook, which also owns the photo and video sharing site Instagram, confirmed that it shut down and later restored her pages at the request of law enforcement, though it ended up permanently taking down two of Gaines’ videos because they said they violated the site’s terms of service, a company spokeswoman confirmed.
The spokeswoman would not describe what the videos depicted but noted content that shows “credible threats of physical harm to individuals” is not allowed on the site. Two other videos from the encounter — one showing an officer standing in Gaines’ doorway and another in which she converses with her son — were not taken down and are still viewable, the company said.
Lee Rowland, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy and Technology Project, said Facebook must be careful about how it decides to comply with law enforcement and censor content.
Facebook, Twitter and similar companies now “dominate the public conversation space” but also “have pseudo-governmental powers” in deciding what content is allowed. She noted that the Minnesota video of Castille’s shooting has contributed significantly to public discourse around shootings by police.
“Here, this is a situation where police have told the public that this woman was a security risk and the aggressor, and visual evidence would only have served to confirm their account,” Rowland said. “We should all be troubled … when Facebook is making ad hoc decisions about when to cooperate with law enforcement.”
Rowland noted that while Baltimore County police have body cameras, the officers involved in the standoff weren’t utilizing them even as the agency sought to curb Gaines’ posting of videos.
“That law enforcement sought to stop a video feed during this incident is particularly concerning when they themselves were not wearing body cameras,” Rowland said. “As a result we only have law enforcement’s narrative of what occurred at the end of this standoff.”
Stephanie Lacambra, criminal defense staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights group, said she did not want to speculate about the Gaines case without knowing all the facts.
“Generally speaking, social media platforms have the right to shut down accounts at their discretion, but they should do so sparingly and be as neutral and transparent as possible in how they make those decisions,” she said in a statement.
Data provided by Facebook about requests for information from law enforcement shows a steady increase in requests.
From July to December 2015, the site received more than 19,200 requests for information from law enforcement, and provided some data in more than 80 percent of those cases. Only 850 requests were described as “emergency disclosures,” and the site does not break down what types of requests were made or how often accounts are deactivated.
The rest of the requests come in the form of search warrants, subpoenas and court orders.
Baltimore City police said they have never asked a social media company to deactivate an account in the midst of a standoff or crisis, and a spokesman declined to say how police might approach such a situation if it were to arise.
“Each tactical situation is different and different approaches are taken depending upon what we have going on,” said spokesman T.J. Smith.
Monday’s incident recalled a standoff from four years ago when the blogger known as The Baltimore Spectator went live on his internet radio show and began streaming with police outside his home. Police were attempting to serve a warrant, and James MacArthur had posted both taunts toward police and a belief that they would try to harm him.
As he streamed, MacArthur called 911 on the air and broadcast his discussions with a negotiator.
“Basically the idea is to let people see what’s really going on, as it’s going on so that if something bad happens, everyone will have witnessed it and we won’t have to wait for carefully crafted police version,” MacArthur said in an interview. “In doing so they help introduce a certain level of increased accountability that otherwise might not be there.”
In one recent case in Tampa, Fla., a suspect’s live streaming aided police. A 30-year-old armed man barricaded himself inside his home and began live streaming on Facebook.
Outside, police accessed his page and began watching. In addition to gaining insight into his state of mind, they could see his locations within the home as he moved around. They saw he was with his dog. They also saw that he was armed.
“We didn’t ask that it be shut off — we watched it,” said Tampa Police spokesman Stephen Hegarty.
Copyright 2016 The Baltimore Sun