Stop rummaging through the Facebook profiles of shooting victims

The shooting death of 18-year-old Sammy Yatim by Toronto police on Friday demands answers, but those answers are not likely to come from the teenager?s online profiles.

Yatim was fatally wounded after a standoff with police early Saturday, after he brandished a knife on a stopped streetcar near Toronto?s Trinity Bellwoods Park. Video and eyewitnesses confirm that he was alone on the streetcar, police officers surrounding the streetcar with their guns drawn. After repeatedly telling Yatim to ?drop the knife,? police fired as many as nine shots at the young man. They also deployed a conducted energy weapon. He died of his injuries that night.

That?s pretty much all we know at this time, and even Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair says he?s waiting for answers from an SIU investigation. But that hasn?t stopped people from digging through Yatim?s Facebook photos looking for clues.

Screenshots of the deceased teen?s Facebook profile, taken shortly after his death, are already making the rounds on Reddit. Yatim?s cover image showed automatic rifles, and there are photos of Yatim and his friends posing with bottles of alcohol and pointing finger guns at the camera. This apparently reveals ?the tough guy and tough guy friends mimicking firing handguns at ya and all around acting like bullies,? according to Reddit user mentalhealthproblems ? an account apparently started just for the sake of vilifying Yatim.

Another Redditor suggested the Facebook profile ? of a teen acting like a teen ? was proof he was up to no good.

?Now we know he wasn?t mentally ill, just a douchebag trying to act tough,? wrote user machi88.

We?ve been down this road before. Following the Trayvon Martin shooting in Florida, photos purporting to show Martin acting like a ?thug? were dredged up as proof that he was at fault. One conservative site even spread a photo of another black teen as evidence of Martin?s seediness.

In the cases of Amanda Todd and Rehtaeh Parsons, both teen girls who killed themselves after long struggles with bullying, journalists and trolls both found online profiles and attempted to glean meaning from the photos and missives contained therein. The only conclusion to be drawn, of course, is that they were both teenage girls living imperfect, though largely normal, lives. The tragedy of their suicides remained largely unanswered.

In the case of the streetcar shooting this weekend, some people have pointed out that Yatim?s Facebook page was altered after his death. The AK-47s disappeared, leaving a sanitized profile behind. This, of course, tells us absolutely nothing other than sometimes grieving families might want a say in how their dead child is remembered and depicted.

There is a place for scrolling through someone?s social media accounts. In Sweden, two teenagers took a photo of themselves before they allegedly robbed a local store of $400. Similarly, people have been arrested and tragedies averted based on the threatening posts they have made on their Facebook accounts.

There is a difference between meaningful news that can offer insight into tragedy, and the peddling of meaningless tidbits of normal childhood. Sometimes Facebook sleuthing doesn?t actually advance the story.

Source: http://o.canada.com/2013/07/29/sammy-yatim-facebook/

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