Absecon Police looking for 'laid-off boy band member'

ABSECON — A South Jersey police department tried a little boy band humor to highlight a suspect in a shoplifting case and got their suspect

Absecon Police posted a picture of a male suspect on their Facebook page and compared him to a "laid-off boy band member" with "frosted tips and ripped designer jeans" reported CBS Philly.

A tweet by Absecon police linking to the page said, "While it's not our job to judge, we can try."

However, the department's Facebook post had been deleted on Monday morning without explanation.

Absecon Police Detective Mitch Levin said the department received an "overwhelmingly positive response" to the post and the suspect was identified "within minutes." Levin said that suspect, identified as Kenneth Corbo,34 turned himself in on Monday morning.

"There was a very small percentage of people who thought the post may have been a little too harsh and we were picking on the guy. The fact that we got him and we didn't want the comments section to get out of control led us to take the post down," Levin said.

In a new Facebook post, the department said the department "takes shoplifting seriously as it has a direct impact on the stores and businesses in our communities. It is also very often directly associated with the drug epidemic sweeping the country."

And is the suspect a boy band fan? "No, I don't think he is," Levin said.

How cops in NJ have used social media to nab dozens of crooks

CBS Philly said that the post, before it was removed, originally read:

This gentlemen with his frosted tips and ripped designer jeans suggests laid-off boy band member. Perhaps boy band groupie who lost his calling around the late 90’s/early 2000’s when these bands started their decline and stopped touring. Times were tough then. JT left *NSYNC in 2001 (one of our detectives is still getting over it). The Backstreet Boys took a break that same year. Unless you had the foresight to jump on that Jonas Brothers train you might have found yourself out of work.

Many departments have embraced social media as a way to get pictures of suspects in front of as many people as possible.

"Typically when we get a lot of shares and likes on a post, we identify the person that we're trying to catch," New Jersey State Police Sgt. Jeff Flynn said.

"Our society has moved to technology and using smartphones, and we're adapting to that," Ocean County Prosecutor Joseph Coronato said.

Contact reporter Dan Alexander at Dan.Alexander@townsquaremedia.com.