The Evil Side of Social Media: Flash Mob Thefts
Sure, it's cute when you use social media and text messaging to reach out to all of your friends and your friends' friends and you all suddenly appear in one spot for a "flash mob" pillow fight, or "silent disco" or to perform the Michael Jackson "Thriller" dance." Marginally cute, at least.
But what about when flash mobs turn evil? Imagine you are alone working the night shift at 7-Eleven when a well-coordinated flash mob of several dozen kids storms the entrance, tears through the aisles of your store and steals whatever it pleases from the shelves. That is what is going on increasingly in places like Philadelphia and, this past weekend, in Germantown, Md. (a Washington, D.C., suburb).
FOX 5 News reports that on Saturday at about 1:45 a.m., a crowd of about 30 young people stormed into a Germantown 7-Eleven, and "grabbed snacks and drinks and anything else they wanted and rushed out without paying." Like the tide rushing in and out, the whole crowd was gone in less than a minute.
Montgomery County police told FOX that the hit on the 7-Eleven was a planned event -- a "flash mob theft." Other flash mob thefts have occurred recently in the region, as well. Police are examining the 7-Eleven video surveillance tapes to identify suspects in the Germantown flash mob. [MORE] ...http://legalblogwatch.typepad.com/legal_blog_watch/2011/08/the-evil-side-of-social-media-flash-mob-robberies-.html
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