Police Warn Against Abbreviating '2020' for Your Legal Protection
A police department from Maine is warning citizens not to abbreviate the year “2020” when they are signing legal documents.
The East Millinocket Police Department posted the public service announcement to Facebook on New Year’s Day.
“When signing and dating legal documents, do not use 20 as the year 2020,” a meme attached to the post read.
Simply writing “20” as the year could put people at risk of fraud because it can be easily modified to represent other years from the 21st century by adding two digits.
“March 3rd, 2020 being written as 3/3/20 could be modified 3/3/2017 or 3/3/2018,” the meme read. “Protect yourself. Do not abbreviate 2020.”
The advice meme, which was originally posted by a law firm, was reposted by the police department because they considered it “sound advice” that “should be considered when signing any legal or professional document.”
“It could potentially save you some trouble down the road,” the Maine police department wrote.
However, the police department was heavily criticized for the PSA.
“It’s good advice…But it’s not new with this decade. It’s always true. If you sign 3/7/19 it could be modified to 3/7/1999 or whatever,” one commenter wrote.
“This isn’t the film ‘Catch Me if You Can’ geniuses. I’d love to hear one practical use for making a document older, especially in a legal context, that would serve anyone in a beneficial way. With check forgery, changing the value is applicable, but you want the date CORRECT, not aged. Lol. Just delete this,” another Facebook user wrote.
“We literally had 100 options for the past year and yet we survived this police generated apocalypse. If this is the best that this PD could conjure up they need to drive to the nearest river and throw their badges in it,” a third wrote.
While the PSA was originally posted on Wednesday, the police department later edited the post to address the negative comments.
“There seems to be a lot of criticism here for a simple cautionary post. Please understand that we handle scam and fraud calls on a regular basis so we try to provide our small community with tips to avoid potential problems,” police wrote.
“Of course we understand that all dates can be altered, however I believe that most here would agree that if a document of any kind, either legal or professional, is brought to our attention as being forged or fraudulent, it would likely raise far more red flags, depending on the circumstances, if it had a date of 1999 as opposed to 2019 or 2021,” the police department continued.
The East Millinocket Police Department emphasized that they believed the warning was valid and was shared with good intentions.
“Again, we shared this meme with a simple cautionary post, giving the citizens of our small community information to consider,” the post read. “Criminals are always looking for ways to take advantage of people. This meme provided a tip that we felt has some validity so this is why we shared it. It is not intended as legal advice or a warning, only as a cautionary tip to consider.”
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