Fugitive taunts police on Facebook, gets arrested

A NEW YORK FUGITIVE taunted police on Facebook to catch him if they could, so they did.

Victor Burgos, 29, was wanted by the police in Utica, New York for domestic violence and harassment of his ex-girlfriend. Multiple warrants had been issued for his arrest and he fled to Brooklyn, ultimately ending up on Utica's 10 most wanted list.

Once Burgos became aware that his mugshot had been posted on the city's most wanted list he logged onto his Facebook account and taunted police with, "Catch me if you can. I'm in Brooklyn."

We think he might have left that last part out if he didn't want to be found. Revealing your location kind of defeats the purpose of becoming a fugitive in the first place, after all, but perhaps Burgos thought he would be harder to find than he really was. There was certainly a more than just a hint of arrogance in his challenge to police.

If that wasn't bad enough, he also uploaded a video of him walking into a local police station, just to show how close he was while avoiding arrest.

US Marshals and the New York City Police Department tracked Burgos down to an apartment in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, where they found him sitting at his computer, logged on to Facebook.

"He told us via Facebook to come and get him and we did," said Sergeant Steve Hauck of the Utica Police Department to The New York Daily News.

Possibly Burgos wanted to hand himself in, realising that the situation had escalated too far when he was put on a most wanted list, but we would have expected him to just go down to the local police station in that case. Hiding away and waiting for the police to find him will most likely result in a harsher sentence than if he had simply turned himself in.

We guess that Facebook, with its location tracking, facial recognition software, and privacy shredding features isn't the best place to issue a challenge to the police, particularly if you might get side-tracked with a game of Farmville when the hunt begins. µ