What is the recommended procedure for suicide or crime threats on Internet? (don't need answer fast)

General Questions
#1

Has anything ever been formally established to respond to suicide threats on Social Media? Or crime threats like I’m going to kill _________?

I guess 911 would be a start. But they are local and really don’t have jurisdiction.

There should be some place to immediately get the response started. Maybe even a web site with interactive chat? Give them the link to a tweet or message post. They can find out who Suzyloves69 is and get local police dispatched. All before that bottle of pills she swallowed takes effect.

Also what is the legal liability for reporting someone that made criminal threats? Like killing their boss. A SWAT team shows up and hauls the guy off. Could he sue the person that reported him?

#2

Report it to the social network operators. There’s usually a “report this content/user” button that will have options for spam, threats etc. They have procedures in place for verifying and handling it.

#3

Since when does 911 have jurisdiction over anything? 911 is a telephone service. They forward your call to whatever agency is best equipped to handle it. If you have reason to believe a crime is being committed, talk to your local police. If they can’t handle your problem, they will forward it to the appropriate agency.

Trying to figure out who has jurisdiction before the crime is reported is a pretty backwards way of doing things.

Why would they?

Depending on the jurisdiction and circumstances, in some places it is a crime to NOT report a threat.

#4

Or to clarify: You ***CAN ***sue somebody for basically anything… IF you want to get laughed out of court, dismissed with prejudice, have your lawyer disbarred, and be forced to pay for the defendant’s legal costs.

#5

Yes, 9-1-1 is local. So calling 9-1-1 will get you the PSAPnear your present location and not necessarily where the incident is taking place.

But determining the proper jurisdiction is a routine task performed many times every day at PSAPs worldwide. Most 9-1-1 staff are not sworn police officers and as such speaking to one of us is not the same as making a formal police report. We simply work to put reporting parties together with the responsible agency.

If you call 9-1-1 on a cell phone the call very well may be answered in a neighboring jurisdiction if your cell phone is getting its strongest signal off a cell tower in that other jurisdiction. The answering PSAP simply transfers the call in accordance with established local procedures.

Occasionally a call is received as the OP posits, from far away. Suppose a mother calls 9-1-1 in Kansas City, MO and says she got a text message from her daughter living in Sacramento, CA saying she is being beaten by her husband right now. The Kansas City PSAP should make efforts to determine the proper PSAP for the Sacramento area and guide the caller according to local procedures by either transferring the call directly (if possible) or by providing the proper contact number for the correct jurisdiction.

It can be difficult to find a suitable number to transfer a call to. Mostly recently I had a caller on our little Caribbean island reporting a medical emergency and needing an ambulance dispatched in Hungary. The only number I could find on the internet was their local version of 9-1-1 so I had to call the Hungarian embassy for assistance. There is a way to make it work.

#6

So the answer to the OP’s questions is “First find out if you are under the jurisdiction of a place where it is a crime”. Ignorance of the law is no excuse blah blah . . .

#7

I hope to never see a tweet or message board suicide post. It is a very real possibility and there needs to be a quick way to report it.

I guess 911 is the first step and reporting the post to the mods second.

#8

That’s a very twisted way to interpret my post and I do not appreciate it.

The intent I was trying to express is: “A criminal cannot sue a person for reporting a crime; A person is morally and sometimes legally required to report a crime, therefore it is contradictory that you could be sued for doing so.”

#9

A couple of months ago my daughter had a woe is me moment, and said on face book that she’d be better off dead. Her friend saw it, and called 911 in her town. They put her in touch with the police. The police from the town where her friend lived called my daughters school and the local police. The school and the local police called all the emergency contact numbers, and I had to leave work, meet up with my daughter, meet up with the police, and assure them everything was ok. From the time she made the Facebook post, which was before school, to the time we all met up, which was after school, was quite a few hours, most of the time was spent tracking her down. But there was a definite procedure that the school and police departments followed.

#10

You said it might be a crime to not report a threat, which is what I commented on. I said nothing about reporting a crime. A “crime” and a “threat” are not the same thing.

The difference is clearcut. A crime is an overt action that is of a criminal nature, and one either does it or doesn’t. The law everywhere obliges a citizen to report it. A threat requires the demonstrable existence of an actual intent along with the opportunity and capability of doing it, or the public utterance of such an intent in a manner that causes civil disorder. See “true threat”.