CITY police are investigating a suspected local anti-crime website for allegedly identifying three boys charged in connection to last month's hit-and-run of a runner on Wellington Crescent, police said Tuesday.
The same site is also being investigated for posting police emergency radio codes, which police say could potentially jeopardize officer safety if the information falls into the wrong hands.
Spokesman Sgt. Kelly Dennison said Canada's Youth Criminal Justice Act forbids the identification of a youth's name. Only under special circumstances can a youth's identity become public -- but its release can only be approved by a judge and for a limited period of time.
Dennison said the names of the three boys were originally posted on YouTube, the popular web video-sharing site. Someone had edited the names into a recording of a local CTV news story of the March 8 hit-and-run of a 49-year-old runner on Wellington.
That edited recording was then uploaded to YouTube.
A link to the YouTube video was then posted on the Winnipeg-based site March 16.
Both appear to have sat relatively unnoticed until Monday when Winnipeg media reported on both sites.
As a result, the YouTube video was removed because its use violated YouTube's terms-of-use conditions. The names of the three boys were still posted on the Winnipeg site late Tuesday afternoon.
The creator of the Winnipeg site was unavailable for comment.
Dennison said police are investigating how the altered TV news story ended up on YouTube -- a tall order given the anonymity of the Internet -- and identification of the boys on the Winnipeg site.
Under the YCJA, anyone found guilty of intentionally identifying a young offender can be sentenced to a jail term not exceeding two years.
The YCJA, like similar laws before it, is based on the protection of young people. The thinking is the identification of a young person hurts their efforts to rehabilitate and may in turn compromise public safety.
"Research indicates that publication or sharing information on records increases a youth's self-perception as an offender, disrupts the family's abilities to provide support, and negatively affects interaction with peers, teachers, and the surrounding community," the federal Department of Justice website says in its explanation of the YCJA.
bruce.owen@freepress.mb.ca
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