BANGOR, Maine - The city of Brunswick is offering its police parking lot as a safer alternative for sales and transactions where the parties don't know each other.
"You know, with the increasing popularity of Craigslist and other Internet yard sale types of sites, it just seemed like a prudent thing to offer a safe location to conduct the exchanges," says Cmdr. Marc Hagan, of the Brunswick Police Department.
Hagan says he knows of no violent incidents involving transactions in Brunswick. But he says it makes sense to offer the lot. "We have video surveillance of our parking lot, so again, why wait until something happens, something bad happens? Why not be proactive?"
Last year, online classified site Craigslist started encouraging its users to make their transactions in police lots after several well-publicized crimes across the country, including murder, attempted rape, strong-arm robbery and other crimes occurred.
