Sometimes meeting a seller from Craigslist face-to-face feels like the beginning of a bad horror movie. Is it really safe to meet a stranger at their house? Residents of Conshohocken, Pennsylvania, no longer have to worry about this after its police department opened a “safe zone”–the lobby and parking lot of the police station–for completing online transactions.
When Conshohocken officer Steve Vallone’s wife told him she was going to a stranger’s house to pick up a piece of furniture she saw advertised on Craigslist, he was wary but it spawned an idea.
“I figured there’s got to be a better place for people who don’t know each other to complete these transactions,” Vallone told the AP. “Why not allow people to complete their online transactions from here? It seems like the perfect match.”
According to NBC10, the parking lot and lobby both have surveillance cameras running 24 hours a day, and the lot also has an emergency call button to ring the station. A similar program exists in a Florida sheriff’s office. This is one trend we hope catches on.
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