BATON ROUGE – On July 22, law enforcement responded to a deadly shooting on Cathedral Drive. Two people were looking to sell a motorcycle through a social media site, but instead they were almost robbed.
One of the attempted thieves, 22-year-old Melique Etieene, died in the shooting.
Baton Rouge Police Department Spokesperson, Lt. L’Jean McKneely, says officers are noticing more people using social media sites to rob them. He says anytime you buy, sell, or trade items through social media, you want to make sure you are in a public area where people are moving.
“Whenever you are in a situation where people don’t want to meet you in a particular location that is wide and open like this here, you know you need to take that precaution and feel that it is something that is uncertain about that person and not conduct business with them,” McKneely said.
The Safe Exchange Zone provides 24-hour recorded surveillance for people to not only conduct online sales transactions, but also business meetings and custody exchanges.
“It could be early morning hours, I’ve seen the exchange of kids in this parking lot in front of headquarters,” he said.
Khadijah Ricard says she’s been meeting with her children’s father at the Safe Exchange Zone for nearly three years.
“It was court-appointed for me. Just the situation where me and my children’s father couldn’t see eye to eye, so in order for everything to be better monitored, we just meet up at the police station,” Ricard said.
Ricard says she recommends other people use the Safe Exchange Zone as well.
“With having everything monitored, there is no way he can go and say ‘Hey, she did this’ or there’s no way for him to be like ‘Oh she didn’t show up,’ because everything is surveilled,” she said.
McKneely says law enforcement officers are in and out of the buildings at all times of the day and night.
“It is highly used and we recommend that people continue to use that. If you don’t know about it, now you know about, so use this area to have safe transactions,” he said.
The Safe Exchange Zone is open to the public at any time. It is located at BRPD Headquarters on Airline Highway.
