Police Notify Mother Of Son’s Death via Facebook

It seems everybody has some form of social media as part of their daily lives, whether its Facebook or Twitter. Now some police departments are adapting to the social media scene, but one PD in particular is under a little heat for how their Facebook page was used.

The Clayton County Police Department in Georgia is under a little bit of pressure by the community after they notified a mother of her son's death by sending her a private message to her Facebook account.

According to the police department they attempted traditional methods of notifying the mother of the news. But after multiple failed attempts of contacting her they resulted to sending her a message to her Facebook account.

Perhaps the worst part of the news was that the mother didn't notice the message until a month later because of Facebook's methods of receiving messages from users who are not friends. The message never showed up in her Facebook inbox, it rather was hidden in a folder titled "other."

Even harder to believe was that the message was sent from a non-official Clayton County PD page. The account that sent the message had a profile picture of Atlanta rapper T.I. which easily would've been mistaken as spam.

"People need to know that it's a police department trying to contact them. If you just have a picture of a rapper TI no one's gonna take that serious," said a friend of the family.

A representative of the Clayton County Police Department has stated, ""Society has accepted social media as a major form of communication, and so have I." They have also stated that "In an effort to prevent this from occurring again, immediate changes are being made." Changes such as creating an official Facebook page for the department.

[Today]