San Francisco has 'Instagram cop' to track down criminal activity

While the sheer popularity of Facebook continues to make it the most fruitful social media platform for cops hunting down criminals, Instagram, too, is becoming increasingly useful thanks to its steadily growing pool of users, ne'er-do-wells among them.
In fact, San Francisco Police Department even has its own "Instagram officer," it was revealed recently. Eduard Ochoa is paid to scan the service day in, day out, keeping his eyes peeled for suspicious characters and criminal behavior, or for additional information on people of interest in connection with investigations already underway.

Late last month, an appeals court in California affirmed a firearms conviction that used Instagram photos as evidence.

The defendant, a minor whose Instagram account was named “40glock,” had posted pictures of himself with a gun tucked into his waistband in 2013. Police used these images as the basis to perform a probation search of his house, which led to his conviction.

Though the thought that Instagram photos can be used as evidence in court might not surprise you, the court documents also revealed that the San Francisco Police Department has at least one officer dubbed an “Instagram officer,” who is adept at nabbing criminals on social media.

The following appears in the court’s ruling:

San Francisco Police Officers Dave Johnson and Eduard Ochoa testified that they were on routine patrol on October 21, 2013. Throughout that day, Officer Ochoa scanned Instagram, a social media website, looking for postings. Officer Ochoa was the "Instagram officer” in his department and had been so for three or four years. His training and experience had taught him “how to monitor and track individuals through Instagram.”

A San Francisco Police Department spokesperson told Business Insider that their officers may use all social media sites during the course of their investigations. The spokesperson also revealed that they have specialized training in different types of social media, and that certain officers can be designated by their unit as the “Instagram officer” or “Facebook officer” based on their expertise — though these aren't formal titles.

When asked if the police department was specifically recruiting tech-savvy officers, the spokesperson said it helps if officers have a knowledge and background in tech, though they haven't begun trying to poach engineers from startups quite yet.

The San Francisco Police Officer's Association recently praised the SFPD's Instagram officer, along with several of his cyber-sleuth co-workers, for carrying out an "extremely intensive investigation using the most modern techniques provided by our new electronic age" to locate a recent suspect involved in a shooting in the city. In another case a couple of years ago, the department managed to use Instagram images to match a weapon to a suspect and then track him down using selfies he'd posted.
Facebook, as already mentioned, still provides cops with the most leads when it comes to apprehending individuals for illegal behavior. Often, the culprits bring it upon themselves -- there was, for example, the guy who was arrested shortly after "liking" his own wanted ad, and a woman who was picked up by cops soon after posting a selfie wearing a recently stolen dress. And we mustn't forget the wanted guy who taunted cops on Facebook with a "catch me if you can" message before being arrested the very next day.