We get asked why we do not name certain locations in our postings. 

It simply boils down to victims’ rights. 

The reasoning behind this is that we strive to treat business victim names like personal victim names.  

We try to prevent a business from negative publicity from being named daily after incidents have occurred there. 

Naming a business victim publicly is like naming a human victim publicly.  

Businesses have a right to privacy too. 

Although they are publicly attended, they are not publicly owned.

Although some may deduce the business location from photos or descriptions, we are not going to physically name them. 

We want to protect a business's reputation just like we would a human victim.  

If you owned a business where crime constantly occurred and we named your business daily, do you think that would hurt your business's reputation?  Of course it would.  

By not naming the victim helps eliminate the negative news making its way to the internet, thereby preserving the reputation of the business.

However, if an active shooter incident is occurring and we want to notify the public of this we would name the location for public safety’s sake.  

In summary, we are not stupid, weird, or dumb — as some of you have commented. 

Instead, please consider that we only want to preserve a business’s reputation by not stigmatizing their name.  

This is why we don't name them.  

We hope this helps answer questions related to why we do this.

Shane Guyant

Chief, Roanoke Rapids Police Department