4 Tips to Keep Your Teen Safe on Facebook

According to a 2010 Pew Internet Project study, nearly three fourths of American teenagers use social networking sites, with Facebook being the most popular by far. But some parents are still skeptical of the site; 55 percent of parents discourage their kids from making a social media profile, according to a recent study by Common Sense Media, a nonprofit that analyzes digital and traditional media.

But parents can set reasonable guidelines with their teens to keep them safe online, says Caroline Knorr, parenting editor of Common Sense Media. “Our position is that parents shouldn’t fear social media,” she says. “Kids are embracing these technologies. As a parent, it’s part of your responsibility to engage with them.” Here are some of her hints to help your child safely use Facebook.

[See how social media sites impact high school students in the classroom.]

1. Be aware: Parents should know whether their child has a Facebook page or not. “They should have a good understanding of what types of things their kids are posting publicly,” she says.

2. Help your child manage privacy settings: Knorr recommends that parents sit down with their child as they choose privacy settings on the site. Make sure your child’s profile isn’t publicly searchable on Google, that settings showing your child’s location are turned off, and that photos are private or visible by friends only.

“Parents should learn what those privacy settings mean and discuss why it’s important to keep some things private.” Facebook often changes its privacy rules, so check in frequently, she says.

[Learn whether it is safe to share photos.]

3. Don’t embarrass them: “Parents need to understand that social networking in today’s world is how kids experiment with their own identity. It’s a normal developmental stage,” she says. “I think parents should try to refrain from commenting, because you may set up a dynamic where your kid will block you [on Facebook], and you might not know about it.”

4. Speak up: If you do see something on your teen’s Facebook page that could damage his or her reputation or put them in danger, talk to them about it—face to face. “We’re so used to communicating electronically,” she says. “But there are a lot of conversations that are important to have in person.”

‘Dougherty Gang’ Sister Attempted to Shoot Officer Before She Was Shot: Cops

‘Dougherty Gang’ Sister Attempted to Shoot

Officer Before She Was Shot: Cops

 

The manhunt for the “Dougherty Gang” ended today when the oldest of the siblings, sister Lee Grace Dougherty, was chased through a field until she turned on a pursuing officer with an automatic pistol and tried to shoot him.

Before she could fire, the officer shot her in the leg, ending the brief notoriety of Dougherty and her two brothers.

Lee Dougherty, who is a 29-year-old stripper, and her two heavily armed brothers, Ryan, 21, and half-brother Dylan Dougherty Stanley, 26, became the focus of a manhunt that stretched from Florida to Colorado over the past week.

During that time, they fired at a Florida cop and robbed a Georgia bank. They also cleaned out their home arsenal of automatic weapons and sent a text message to their mother with the ominous message, “There’s a time for all of us to die.”

The trio vanished from sight until they were spotted Tuesday buying camping equipment in Colorado. With police on alert, their vehicle was located this morning in a camp round, but the car was gone by the time police arrived. Cops stumbled across the car at a gas station, prompting a wild 20 mile car chase along I-25 with speeds that topped 100 mph and one of the Doughertys leaning out of the car to shoot at the police.

They lost control of the car near a construction site. The car rolled and the Doughertys tried to scatter, police said.

Lee Dougherty “left the car and took off running” through a field Pueblo County Sheriff Kirk Taylor said at a news conference today. When confronted by an officer who was chasing her, she “turned to chamber a round,” Taylor said, but was shot in the leg by the cop before she could fire.

One of the brothers was captured immediately, but a second ran across the highway and towards an area of restaurants and shops where he was found by police.

“There were officers walking about with rifles,”Jack Vette, a civilian who arrived at the site shortly after the fugitives’ car crashed, told ABC News. “Police were just walking all over trying to find the other suspect.”

Police found some powerful weapons in the car including two machine pistols, two AK-47 assault rifles and a handgun.

Police say Lee Dougherty’s injury was not serious. No officers were injured.

Dougherty Gang Captured After High Speed Chase

Vette, who arrived at the scene shortly after the crash, said that 12 to 15 police cars were parked on the highway. Vette, who estimated he was about 250 feet from the crash site, said there was also an ambulance present and paramedics tending to an unidentified person. Vette said it appeared that CPR was being given.

“They loaded the person up on the guerney, put them in an ambulance and left,” Vette said.

Police had warned that the trio was heavily armed and feared that would rather die than be captured. Those who know the Doughertys shared that fear.

“I don’t think I’m ever going to see her again,” Brendon Bookman, the fiance of Lee Dougherty, said before the capture.

“I’ve always been able to get her out of tight spots in the past, but I can’t do anything about this. There’s no way I can help her now,” Bookman said.

The baby brother of the siblings, Ryan Dougherty, is awaiting the birth of a son with his girlfriend. Investigators think the impending birth might have sent him and his siblings over the edge. Ryan Dougherty was forced to register as a sex offender after sending explicit text messages to an 11-year-old girl. He feared that his sex offender status would prevent him from seeing his soon to be born child.

Ryan Dougherty’s girlfriend recently updated her Facebook profile picture to include a picture of her with her now fugitive lover.

Over the weekend she wrote, “I know y u did what did but buddy ur supposed to be there when I deliver.”

British cities clear up after looting, London quiet

LONDON: British cities began on Wednesday to clean up shopping streets littered with debris from a night of looting by gangs of hooded youths copying the tactics of young Londoners who had rampaged through districts of the capital for three nights.

London itself was largely quiet on Tuesday night, with some 16,000 police — 10,000 more than on Monday — sent onto the streets in a show of force in districts where gangs had looted
shops and burned cars and buildings virtually unchecked on the previous three nights.

Prime Minister David Cameron, who cut short a family holiday in Italy to deal with the crisis, was due to chair a second meeting of COBRA, the government’s crisis committee, and
recalled parliament, a rare occurrence, to debate the violence. The chaos in London, and fears of further disruption, led to the cancellation of an England-Netherlands soccer friendly on
Wednesday and the postponement of three club matches.

The looting also showed the world an ugly side of London less than a year before it hosts the 2012 Olympic Games, an event officials hope will serve as a showcase for the city. A visit by an International Olympic Committee went ahead on Tuesday “as planned” and the London organisers of the Games said the violence would not hurt preparations for the Olympics.

While heavy policing in London prevented all but a few incidents in the capital, copycat looting and violence erupted in cities and towns to the north and west. Groups of youths in hooded tops fought running battles with police in Manchester in northwest England, smashing windows and looting shops, and setting fire to a clothes shop. In Salford, greater Manchester, rioters threw bricks at police and set fire to buildings. A BBC cameraman was attacked. Television pictures showed flames leaping from shops and cars, and plumes of thick black smoke billowing across roads.

“Greater Manchester Police has been faced with extraordinary levels of violence from groups of criminals intent on committing widespread disorder,” Assistant Chief Constable Gary Shewan said. “These people have nothing to protest against – there is no sense of injustice or any spark that has led to this. It is pure and simple acts of criminal behaviour which are the worst I have seen on this scale.” In Liverpool’s Toxteth district, rioters attacked two fire engines and a fire officer’s car, police said. Earlier, some 200 youths throwing missiles wrecked and looted shops, causing ‘disorder and damage’, police said. Police said they had arrested 47 people in Manchester and Salford, and 37 in Toxteth.

In Gloucester, in western England, eight fire crews fought a blaze in a large derelict building, cars were set on fire and groups of youths attacked police with rocks and bottles. Cars were burned and stores looted in West Bromwich and Wolverhampton, and in the Midlands town of Nottingham a gang of young men set fire to a police station. There were also disturbances in Birmingham and Leicester in the Midlands, and Milton Keynes north of London.

In London, commuters hurried home early on Tuesday, shops shut and many shopkeepers boarded their windows. Gangs have ransacked stores, carting off clothes, shoes and electronic goods, torched cars, shops and homes — causing tens of millions of pounds of damage — and taunted the police.

Community leaders said the violence in London, the worst for decades in the multi-ethnic capital of 7.8 million, was rooted in growing disparities in wealth and opportunity, but many
insisted that greed was the looters’ only motive.

Prime Minister David Cameron told reporters: “This is criminality pure and simple and it has to be confronted and defeated.” “People should be in no doubt that we will do everything
necessary to restore order to Britain’s streets,” he said after the first meeting of COBRA

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