Police stations all over the United States are putting up their own online safe zones, where online sellers and buyers can meet each other and trade goods with the security of knowing the police are just meters away if something goes wrong.
Online safe zones are not new, but their popularity has only exploded within the last several months as a growing number of incidents perturb the online trading public. One of the latest police stations to establish its own online safe zone is the one in Georgetown, just north of Boston, Massachusetts.
"They have to meet them somewhere, but they don't know who they're meeting and they don't really have any background on these people," says Lt. Scott Hatch of the Georgetown police. "They can come here and at least they'll feel that the person is legitimate and won't take their money."
Online safe zones are typically established spaces inside the police station's lobby or on the parking lot where online traders can meet each other and exchange goods for money. Normally, the police do not interfere in the transactions between the parties involved, but in some cases, such as in Fulshear, Texas, police will check their databases for stolen goods if requested by someone.
Michelle Velleman, a 44-year-old pharmaceutical executive assistant is one of the citizens who have used the online safe zone in Georgetown. She says she went to the online safe zone to sell a table, a cell phone and a Zumba dance fitness kit to buyers she found on Facebook, and that she feels a whole lot more secure doing the trading there than some place else.
"It is always a little nerve-wracking when you go to someone's house. It's in the back of your mind: 'I hope this person is okay and everything turns out all right," Velleman says. "I think my mother is happier I'm doing it this way."
A series of high-profile murders committed by persons who were supposed to meet with a buyer and seller on Craigslist have led the police to step in and find new ways to make online trading safer for everyone. Most recently, a 19-year-old college student in Illinois was killed in May by a man who is believed to have responded to his ad. Just two months before that, a pregnant woman in Colorado was stabbed by someone who claimed to have been selling baby clothes. The woman survived, but the fetus did not.
