PITTSFIELD, Mass. (WWLP) – The Pittsfield Police Department is warning the community to exercise caution and stop sharing unverified social media posts about missing persons circulating online.
In a Facebook post, police highlighted that posts from certain sources, specifically the Facebook page “Pittsfield’s Buy, Sell Trade, and Free,” have been spreading misinformation about missing individuals, leading to thousands of unnecessary shares and confusion.
According to Pittsfield Police, these posts are often fake or use misleading images and captions, suggesting that individuals are missing from Pittsfield when they are not, or, in many cases, are not missing at all. Police officials said some of these images are stolen from various sources online, sometimes even showing people who were reported missing in the past but have since been located.
In one instance, a post falsely claimed that NYPD Officer Johnathan Diller was missing. Officer Diller was, in fact, killed in the line of duty in March 2024, and the post represents an alarming misuse of his image, adding emotional weight to the department’s concerns about misinformation.