Police surf the Internet to locate would-be suicides
By Jonathan Lis, Haaretz Correspondent, 24 april 2006
An anonymous surfer at a large Internet forum left a laconic message three weeks ago: "I'm going to kill myself," it said. No address or any other identifying details. The forum moderators quickly informed the police negotiations unit - in keeping with procedures established this past year.
Members of the unit, whose daily activity seems like something from Hollywood action movies, are skilled primarily at persuading kidnappers to release hostages, or talking jumpers down from towers, but since the beginning of 2005 the unit has taken on a new mission: locating 147 Internet surfers who have posted suicide messages.
Superintendent Yoram Lavon, deputy chief of the unit and a psychologist by training, got word from the forum moderators and realized that the surfer, whose online handle was "Regards from Acre," was in mortal danger. The Internet service provider supplied the address and telephone number of the person from whose account the message was sent.
"I assessed the risks and realized this person might commit suicide at any moment," Lavon recalls. "I telephoned the number of the account holder, but nobody answered. I entered the forum where the message was posted and searched for virtual friends of his from previous correspondence, who might be able to provide clues to his identity."
Lavon found a man who knew the surfer by his first name and asked him to phone immediately. When the man called, Lavon briefed him on the situation and asked for his help.
The virtual friend gave Lavon the home address of "Regards from Acre" and said the suicide threat seemed credible since the man had gone bankrupt. "With his help, I was able to build a psychological profile, to understand his distress and how he might be persuaded not to carry out his intentions," Lavon said.
A police car rushed to the house, but the door was locked. The cops burst in and found a letter saying he had left to drown himself in the sea. Another police car was dispatched to the beach, where cops found the man trying to drown himself. He was taken to the police station, where he was joined by his friends from the forum. Afterward he was transferred to the welfare services for treatment.
This rescue story is not unusual: Since the beginning of 2005 the police negotiations unit has received 147 anonymous suicidal postings. On an average of once every other day, investigators find themselves deciphering a riddle in a race against time. According to the police, Israel is the only country in the world that works to locate these surfers and rescue them.
To date, none of the people reached in time have killed themselves. In eight of the cases the police handled, cops arrived at the last minute and managed to get the would-be suicides medical treatment.
A breakdown of the messages the unit has received showed that 50 percent of posters were women, 32 percent were men, and in the remaining cases gender could not be determined. Some 30 percent of all cases turned out to be false alarms or were not motivated by genuine suicidal intentions. Among adolescents, 64 percent of the messages were posted by girls and 36 percent by boys.
The chief of the negotiations unit, Commander Shmulik Zoltak, generated much interest when he presented this unique police activity at an international conference of negotiations units in Canada six months ago. Following that conference, Swedish police representatives came to Israel and decided to set up a similar team after two boys were found dead on a railroad track after posting a suicide note on the Internet.
Police must tread carefully
Locating and saving a suicidal surfer appears a nearly impossible mission. "All you know for sure is the handle the message poster chose to use. The rest - who it is, whether male or female, how old, a name - all these are unknown," Lavon says. And even making use of the one piece of information available - the Internet account holder's phone number - is problematic. "We are always cautious and have to take into account that the suicide attempt might have stemmed from a father's abuse of his son, and the father is the one who answers our phone call," Zoltak says. "Even in less complicated cases, we have to deal with the parents' basic mistrust to persuade them it's not a crank call."
Police expand their information about the person by locating previous postings, correspondence with other surfers, and the type of forum where the message was posted - a forum for victims of sexual abuse or compulsive eaters, for example.
Forums safeguard privacy
Neta Zilberg runs the forums at Tapuz, Israel's largest portal, where more than 1.5 million surfers post messages at over 1,200 forums. Zilberg says that forum moderators wake her three times a week at night to report a suicide posting, but only a handful are ultimately reported to the police.
According to Zilberg, more than 1,000 volunteers notify her staff the moment a suicidal message is posted. The next step is to contact the Sahar volunteer organization, which assists people in suicidal states. Police are alerted only if there is a clear-cut fear for a surfer's life.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/708472.html
