< Previous page

Facebook and other Internet social networking sites such as MySpace.com and Friendster.com became popular with teens several years ago, creating online communities for chatting, sharing pictures and making friends. More and more university police departments are turning to these sites to gather information.

"As students have migrated to electronic communication, we've had to adjust to that," said N.C. State University Police Sgt. Jon Barnwell. "Day to day, we peruse these sites. It's part of our job now because that's where students are."

Nationally, police and university officials turn to these sites to make drastic decisions. Last year in Colorado, police arrested a 16-year-old boy pictured on MySpace with a gun and charged him with juvenile possession of a firearm.

In April, officials at the State University of New York in Cobleskill suspended student Tharindu Meepegama and sent him to a mental hospital after finding a Facebook photo of him posing with a shotgun and reading a comment they found troubling.

Meepegama, who is from Sri Lanka, was escorted from his apartment in handcuffs after university leaders saw the photo, he said. He has since won back his right to study there and says the incident was a misunderstanding.

"As they say, hindsight is 20-20," he said, "and now I lie in bed at night and think about everything I post online and make sure nothing can be misconstrued."

Intent lost in translation

Because of how students use these sites, it is easy to see why adults often misinterpret postings and photos.

"To the extent that it's a dress-up-and-play thing, it is widely misunderstood by adults," said Fred Stutzman, a graduate student at UNC-Chapel Hill who has conducted many studies on online social networking sites. "Just because we see these photos on the Internet does not mean we have a bunch of young people ready to have shootouts with police."

University police say they often don't have the luxury of giving students the benefit of the doubt. "When it comes to threatening behavior, unless we have something else to counter it, we have to treat it as a threat," said Marlene Hall, director of UNC-Charlotte's University Police and Public Safety. "We don't have some sort of magic notion or ESP or something."

UNC-Wilmington police have been unwilling to discuss their investigation into the PlayStation 3 robbery and the Dec. 1 raid of Strickland's house. They were unavailable Friday to discuss how their department uses sites such as Facebook to investigate student behavior.

In April, Mills pleaded guilty to common law robbery for his part in the PlayStation robbery. He is on probation and works full time with a crew building solar homes.

Strickland's death haunts him. His possible role in it devastates him.

"The injustice of his death crushed me, and it has taken a long time to even begin moving on from what has happened," Mills said.

After Strickland died, he stripped his Facebook profile off the Internet.

"It simply seems too risky to me now to involve myself in any way online, and I don't think that will ever change," Mills said.

(News researcher Denise Jones contributed to this report.)

< Previous page

Get $150+ in coupons in every Sunday N&O. Click here for convenient home delivery.