Lewiston Police see spike in text message harassment
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LEWISTON, ID - The Lewiston Police Department has seen a rise in threats made to local residents via text message in recent months.
The era of threatening phone calls and voice-mails is news of the past as people turn to harassing others with a more modern technology.
"Everything you use electronically is usually right there for us to look at," said Lewiston Police Department Caption Roger Lanier.
Prolific text messaging is a growing trend among adolescents in the Valley as cell phones continue their upward climb of popularity. And as more and more cell phones fall into the hands of teens, who think they're safe with what they send through text, a spike in harassment has been reported by the Lewiston Police Department.
"As the younger folks start using cell phones, that don't necessarily think before they act, we do see an increase in threatening and harassing text messages," said Lanier.
According to Idaho statutes, anyone with the intent to annoy, terrify, threaten, intimidate, harass or offend another with a phone, whether it's through text messaging repeated phone calls, or voice mails, is subject to a misdemeanor crime. Those with second convictions are subject to a felony.
"Sending a text message is just like making a phone call and actually saying the words," said Lanier.
Often times people think they're playing it safe by sending text messages instead of placing a phone call. But that's not the case.
"Every single transaction that goes from one phone to another, there are records," said Inland Cellular Customer Support Supervisor Jodi Bolon. "We have records for everything."
The Lewiston Police Department has tools to extract messages from victims' phones that tells them who, what, and where the message came from. Often times a subpoena of records will also be sent to the cellular provider.
"We can pull the records, we can pull the content, we can pull where it's coming from, we could actually probably find out what city they were in when they were doing it," said Boler. "We can find out a lot of information that they think that they are safe from."
"If you're annoying someone and they tell you that, you need to stop," said Lanier.
If you think you're a victim of text message harassment, you should contact your local police department.
The era of threatening phone calls and voice-mails is news of the past as people turn to harassing others with a more modern technology.
"Everything you use electronically is usually right there for us to look at," said Lewiston Police Department Caption Roger Lanier.
Prolific text messaging is a growing trend among adolescents in the Valley as cell phones continue their upward climb of popularity. And as more and more cell phones fall into the hands of teens, who think they're safe with what they send through text, a spike in harassment has been reported by the Lewiston Police Department.
"As the younger folks start using cell phones, that don't necessarily think before they act, we do see an increase in threatening and harassing text messages," said Lanier.
According to Idaho statutes, anyone with the intent to annoy, terrify, threaten, intimidate, harass or offend another with a phone, whether it's through text messaging repeated phone calls, or voice mails, is subject to a misdemeanor crime. Those with second convictions are subject to a felony.
"Sending a text message is just like making a phone call and actually saying the words," said Lanier.
Often times people think they're playing it safe by sending text messages instead of placing a phone call. But that's not the case.
"Every single transaction that goes from one phone to another, there are records," said Inland Cellular Customer Support Supervisor Jodi Bolon. "We have records for everything."
The Lewiston Police Department has tools to extract messages from victims' phones that tells them who, what, and where the message came from. Often times a subpoena of records will also be sent to the cellular provider.
"We can pull the records, we can pull the content, we can pull where it's coming from, we could actually probably find out what city they were in when they were doing it," said Boler. "We can find out a lot of information that they think that they are safe from."
"If you're annoying someone and they tell you that, you need to stop," said Lanier.
If you think you're a victim of text message harassment, you should contact your local police department.
