thewhitehatter
Police-Only Social Media Emergency Portals & Contacts
This message is intended for those in law enforcement, especially school resource officers, who follow The White Hatter Team. Given the prevalence of social media, law enforcement is often tasked with investigating a variety of crimes that are committed on many different social networks. What we’re witnessing is that a lot of these cases are emergencies that are extremely time sensitive (e.g. self-harm/suicide, bomb threats, weapon threats). Many of the most popular social networks recognize this reality and have an Emergency Law Enforcement-Only Portal that allows law enforcement to obtain information on a posting or account that could assist in bringing an event to a successful conclusion without having to go through a lengthy court order process. Again, these portals should only be used to obtain information for EMERGENCY circumstances that surround life or death situations. Some of the portals mentioned below can also help walk an officer through the legal administrative processes to obtain information. This process can freeze an account’s information as evidence and this step is required in an investigation that is non-emergent in nature. We suggest that you bookmark these links on both your mobile and desktop/laptop devices.
Facebook and Instagram
https://www.facebook.com/records/login/
https://www.facebook.com/safety/groups/law/guidelines/
Snapchat
https://storage.googleapis.com/snap-inc/privacy/lawenforcement.pdf
Twitter & Periscope
https://help.twitter.com/forms/lawenforcement
https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/twitter-law-enforcement-support#14
YouTube
(Remember that YouTube is owned by Google)
https://calmass.org/?wpdmpro=google-le-guide
https://www.musical.ly/en-US/law-enforcement
Tinder
https://www.help.tinder.com/hc/en-us/articles/115003957566-Information-for-law-enforcement
Tumblr
https://www.tumblr.com/docs/en/law_enforcement
Kik
https://lawenforcement.kik.com/hc/en-us
https://lawenforcement.kik.com/hc/en-us/categories/200320809-Guide-for-Law-Enforcement
Darren Laur
The White Hatter