A Montgomery County law enforcement agency plans to post the names of those arrested for DWI on the social networking site Twitter.
By tweeting the names of DWI suspects who have been charged in cases considered strong enough to prosecute, Chief prosecutor Warren Diepraam said he believes that the threat of humiliation could give people a reason to not drink and drive.
"We've kind of simplified it by using Twitter, putting that information that's already out there as a public record, putting it on Twitter so that people could follow who's been arrested," Diepraam said.
"Sometimes you can embarrass the right offender and you can say, 'Hey, don't get out of your community. Don't drink and drive. And if you do, there are collateral damages and not just the criminal case,'" said Brett Ligon with the Montgomery County District Attorney's Office.
"I think part of the problem is everybody just kind of thinks that they're OK. 'It's no big deal. I didn't have a drink for a couple of hours so I'm sobered up now,'" said Don Egdorg with the Houston Police Department.
Montgomery County officials said they will continue publicizing the names of DWI suspects until at least the New Year's holiday.
Harris County District Attorney's Office said it has no plans to implement the same program.
Follow www.twitter.com/montgomerytxdao for updates.
(Source)
Comments
Sounds like a good idea to me. Drunk drivers are killers and maybe this will stop one of them. Way to go Montgomery County DA!
If the law states a person is innocent until proven guilty why would it make sense to post the names of people who have been charged with a crime but under the law are innocent until proven guilty. This makes no sense to post the name of an innocent person who has not been convicted of a crime. There are many people who are falsely arrested in this country and yes this does happen more often than you think.
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