Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Police text cocaine users

I was chatting with Patrick Smith from SMS is the New Black about the future of mobile (something we'd all been talking about all day at the Future of Mobile Conference and I've questioned here ), and we both agreed that there was still a lot of mileage left in today's technology - not least trusty old SMS.

So I thought I'd check out Patrick's blog and although it's a new blog on the block, I like what's there so far and was particularly interested in his coverage of the police texting cocaine users in St Albans. It's such a simple idea. The police busted a bunch of cocaine dealers who were operating a delivery service not unlike your local pizza delivery service. As such, cocaine buyers ring up their local cocaine delivery service on their mobile and make their order and it gets delivered. So when the police caught the dealers, they also grabbed their phones and checked who had called the order line and texted them back.

"Police also sent text messages to 668 phone numbers they found thought to be of regular cocaine users.

The text messages said no action would be taken against the users and offered receivers help to kick drug addictions.

The recipients were also directed to a website with links to the Talk to Frank drugs advice website where they can get help."

So simple.

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