Oregon Public Broadcasting

If you use social networking websites such as Facebook or YouTube, you've probably asked yourself, "Should I share this or not?"

And you've surely heard stories about people exercising poor judgment in the real world and then compounding it online.

This is one of those stories. Tom Banse reports on how self-incriminating internet postings are helping cops fight crime on public land.

Larry Raedel looks out the rain-streaked windows of his Olympia office and cracks a joke about it being "June-uary." Nice then that the police chief for Washington state forests can fight crime in the great outdoors from the comfort of his desk.

Off-road vehicles in Washington state

Larry Raedel: "For instance, let's just bring up YouTube. In this particular one, we'll just type in 4x4... off road... in Capitol Forest."

Up pop dozens of short videos. They depict jacked-up Jeeps, Toyotas and Broncos spinning in the mud, scaling stumps, or driving down creek beds.

Larry Raedel: "They're going through water here which is habitat in some cases... They're eroding the soils. Eventually this may work its way down into a stream that may be fish-bearing and could cause some problems that way."

There are designated trails for motorized toys, but this doesn't look like one of them. Blazing rogue trails is a misdemeanor and Raedel can also pursue a driver for civil damages.

Larry Raedel: "There was clearly a plate on that vehicle going by. Here's another one. It's a Washington license plate on it. We can clearly make that particular plate out. So this is what we're looking for on these sites."

To make a case with YouTube, officers need to extract a license plate and identify some landmark that confirms the illegal off roading is happening in their jurisdiction.

Larry Raedel has yet to test the admissibility of a self-incriminating internet video in court. But he describes how YouTube detective work cracked one recent case.

It developed from a tip by a web-surfing Fish & Wildlife officer in Arizona. What caught that officer's eye was a post seeking helpers to blaze a new unauthorized trail. The cops traced the item to a 17-year-old boy in southwest Washington.

A phone call from Chief Raedel resolved the case.

Larry Raedel: "We were able to talk to him, educate him and he has apologized several times. As a result, we have now been able to put him to work for DNR. Instead of creating an enemy now, we have an ally that's going to be helping us."

Raedel agrees this episode and others reflect pent up demand for legitimate 4x4 trails.

Crystal Crowder is president of an off-road club in Clark County, Washington called Piston's Wild. She expresses a certain frustration with the painfully slow process to establish new routes. The club website includes an online forum and user videos.

Crystal Crowder: "The internet has been a tremendous boon for us to be able to reach out to thousands of people and share the word with them. You know, tread lightly. Stay on the trail. Don't build new trails. These are the kinds of behaviors that will be rewarded with more areas to ride in or more areas being opened up."

Crowder says she doesn't have a problem with cops perusing her site. She says members already police each other to put their sport in the best possible light.

Crystal Crowder: "Where someone may post up and say, ‘Look what I did. I did this horrible thing I should not have been doing,' a large group of peers will generally jump on that and discipline that person online and kind of teach them a lesson about what's right and what's wrong."

Crowder doesn't want the face of her sport to be drivers like these yahoos on YouTube.

That's a beer cooler and rider gone overboard from the pickup bed. But the driver's not a total dummy. To the police he looks out of bounds.

However, no license plate shows and the faces and location are fuzzy. Which goes to show why officers consider the internet useful, but no substitute for getting out into the woods.