geekosystem

Today in Top Notch Police Work news, police in Britain sniffed out an outdoor marijuana farm and brought the operation to a halt -- and it was all thanks to the rank farts of one of their colleagues.

When a ten-person strong team of Swedish police officers responded to an emergency call over the weekend, they didn't know what they were in for, but considering the details they had to go on -- the caller's description of the situation stated had included the sound of gunshots and frantic cries for help -- they can be forgiven for expecting the worst. Happily, rather than  gruesome abbatoir they may have anticipated, the officers were instead confronted with... a group of teenagers playing Call of Duty.

After 16-year-old Marianne Vaatstra was raped and murdered in the Netherlands in 1999, the case quickly went nowhere. Those responsible were were never found, though the police conducted a thorough investigation. There were, however, traces of matching DNA on both the girl's body and a lighter in her bag. This summer, the police decided to conduct a mass DNA dragnet of around 7,000 local men. Compliance wasn't mandatory, but that didn't stop the man that appears to be Vaatstra's killer from submitting his own.

If you were to, say, receive a phone call from your house phone, but all you could hear was some banging and scraping, what would you do? No words are spoken; it's just the foreboding noises coming across. For many, this event might never play out due to not having a house phone, but when Bruce Gardner got a call on his cell featuring this exact scenario, he called the police because he feared his house was being robbed. As it turns out, his dog had just gotten hold of the phone and accidentally called him.

Batman just can't catch a break. Not only does the comic book figure have real-life imitators, they seem to constantly be getting themselves in trouble. Mark Wayne Williams, dressed in a Batman outfit, was arrested this weekend after refusing to leave the scene of a crime. This is the second incident where Williams has been arrested in his Batman duds, so it might be time to hang up the cape.

The Seattle Police Department has taken an interest in social media. In order to better inform citizens, and be seen as involved in the local area, they've created a project called Tweets By Beat. Barring the fact that it seems there's at least three different ways to format the name of the project, it provides specialized local Twitter feeds for all 51 beats that Seattle police keep an eye on. Big Brother was already watching, but now you can watch them watch you.

In our ever-increasingly technology dependent world, social media has become a force with which to be reckoned. Our old institutions are still trying to bridge the gap, but the good folks in Pottstown, Pennsylvania certainly seem to understand our evolving world better than most. After a local paper, the Pottstown Mercury, started pinning mugshots to Pinterest, the local police have seen a 58% increase in arrests.

Giving credence that there absolutely are rational people in charge -- in some areas -- is District of Columbia Police Chief Cathy Lanier. Effective July 19th, Lanier issued a general order that defines and prohibits unlawful interference with the public's recording or photography of police activities. It remains to be seen what kind of effect this will have on ground level operations when conflicts inevitably arise, but it's definitely a shift in the right direction.

The local police of Evansville, Indiana flipped when threats against their family were posted on a Topix forum. They flipped so hard, they sent a SWAT team with a search warrant to the location corresponding to the IP address of the offending forum-poster. Employing the "break glass and throw flashbangs first, ask questions later" strategy, the team tossed two flashbangs into the house before entering to find a startled 18-year-old girl watching the Food Network, and an unsecured Wi-Fi network.

It turns out that there is a little game that some people connected to this great series of tubes like to play. It's called "SWATing" and it involves calling law enforcement officers on the home of someone who irritated you on the Internet. On June 17, 16-year-old Jacob Neumann's home was surrounded by heavily armed police officers for banning a Minecraft player from the server he was administrating.

Police were assaulted with a few very odd items earlier this week when they responded to a call that led them to a man in Hackensack, New Jersey, who was threatening to harm himself. It turns out that the man, 43-year-old Wayne Carter, certainly did follow through on his threats, and cut off pieces of his own skin and intestines, and threw them at police.

While drones have been credited with much success overseas, even being used in an ongoing campaign in Pakistan, the use of unmanned aerial vehicles has remained limited here in the U.S.. Part of the reason for the hesitation to embrace the technology domestically was demonstrated recently in Texas when a prototype drone being used in a photo-op went hay-wire and crashed into a nearby police vehicle. Looks like we've got a while before Skynet takes out humanity.

A 30 year old man was arrested in Madison, Wisconsin last week. The arrest came after people nearby complained to police about the gentleman's excessive drinking and drug use. Police found a knife, marijuana, and drug paraphanalia on his person. Given the fact that the cops found a loaded gun in his bag during a previous run in with the law, the man was taken into custody. His name? Beezow Doo-Doo Zopittybop-Bop-Bop.

While most encounters had with the police are far less adorable, Potato the bulldog seemed to get on quite well with this quadruped member of the NYPD's mounted police. Not enough to satiate your need for cuteness? Don't worry, this story was captured from more than one angle. (via BuzzFeed)

Bitcoins are a P2P-based digital currency produced by siccing computers' horsepower on solving difficult, time-intensive math problems. As we mentioned in our article on browser-based Bitcoin generation, the cost of the electricity it takes to produce Bitcoins on average exceeds the monetary value of Bitcoins produced, but that hasn't stopped some folks from trying their luck at Bitcoin mining anyway, sometimes working alone, sometimes in pools. As it turns out, all that electricity use has its downside: Namely, it can make serious Bitcoin miners look like marijuana growers to police. (Marijuana farmers use up a ton of electricity on lights to grow the plants indoors.) Now, there are (possibly apocryphal) stories among the Bitcoin community that some miners have had their homes raided or even been arrested when local police confused one kind of electricity-intensive activity for the other. And high electricity bills can be used as probable cause for issuing a search warrant. According to one IRC chat on the subject:

Given the libertarian leanings among many of the people to whom an untraceable, P2P currency would have appeal, don't expect it to go over well if Bitcoin-prompted police raids become a thing in the future. (Bitcoin Miner via ComputerWorld)