Police in New Zealand nabbed a burglar after posting security camera footage of him trying to crack a bar’s safe on the Internet site Facebook.
Police said it was New Zealand’s first such Facebook arrest and said they would use the site again to fight crime.
“Facebook was very, very handy, and it’s a good little tool,” Senior Sgt. John Fookes of Queenstown police said today.
The burglar, wearing a ski mask and carrying a bag of tools, broke into a tiny storage room inside the Franklin Tavern in the tourist town of Queenstown early Monday and tried to cut into a safe containing $12,000 in takings from gambling machines. He later removed the mask and left empty-handed. Officers posted the footage on the Queens town police Facebook page and identification was “very, very quick; overnight, we had a number of responses” from the public, Fookes said.
