Amory PD chief: Social media disrupts investigations, courtroom decisions

AMORY, Miss. (WCBI) – Amory Police Chief Ronnie Bowen said social media encourages a lot of rumors, false information, and conspiracy theories that do not serve the victims and their families.

“You have a lot of people that sat behind the keyboard that’s got a lot of time on their hands to second guess what we do. With all cases, we’re looking after the victim. And the cases where the victim doesn’t survive, it’s their family. We’re looking for closure for them. We’re looking for closure for our community. Because when our community hurts, we hurt,” said Bowen.

Bowen said there hasn’t been an uptick in crime, people just see it more in the media.

“Everything is more publicized because of social media. And we try to be transparent as much as possible. But telling everything we know about a case is not transparent. We cannot just put everything we got out on the table for everybody to review and whatever. You just can’t do that,” said Bowen.

Bowen said an unbiased jury doesn’t serve the case any justice.

“We want cases that are happening in Monroe County to be tried in Monroe County. If you put everything that you have out so that you taint where there’s nobody in the jury pool that could go in and be untainted upfront, then you can’t hold that trial in our county,” said Bowen.

The chief said his department strikes when the iron is hot so a case never gets cold.

“As long as there’s information available, leads to run, evidence to run, evidence to have processed, that case is not cold. I mean you’re still actively working on that case. We haven’t worked a cold case in our jurisdiction. All of the cases that we have solved are cases we’ve been working on on a daily basis. We’re striving for that endpoint and that endpoint is to bring someone to bear the consequences of what they’ve done,” said Bowen.

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