Hostage-taking with Facebook friends

A Pennsylvanian man took hostages during a standoff with police.  He also took time to update his Facebook page.

Thaxton, who had a prior criminal record, updated his Facebook profile multiple times throughout the morning, telling his Facebook friends "i cant take it no more i'm done bro" and "how this ends is up to yall bro."

This was too much time, for the police.  They were not pleased.  For one, multitasking:

"People were sending Facebook messages. We could see that he was paying more attention to Facebook than to the negotiating team, which was hampering our abilities to resolve the situation," Diane Richard, a spokeswoman for Pittsburgh Police Department...

For another, the hostage-taker received popular support for his actions:

Richard said not every [Facebook] message asked Thaxton to give up, that some encouraged him to keep going.

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(thanks to Todd Bryant and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Digital Futures Unconference participants; photo of an exercise by USAG-Humphreys)

Comments

[Shell]

Maybe the negotiators need to change their communication mediums instead of complaining about him not giving them attention? I mean, a relatively sane person might give the negotiating team their attention, but a relatively sane person probably wouldn't take hostages in the first place.