Blogging As Crime-Fighting

Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes sometimes walked past 346 and 348 93rd Street, between Third and Fourth Avenues in Brooklyn, near his own home in the neighborhood, but he didn't notice the signs of criminal activity that were going on there. It took a group of concerned citizens, who connected over a website, to add up the details and realize that the property was a location of ongoing drug activity.

According to an article in today's New York Times,

A core group of seven people who met through the blog brought the case to the attention of the community board and met with the authorities. “A group of people who did not know each other came together and traded information,” he said.

Katherine Khatari, 47, who owns a coffee shop in Bay Ridge, said she learned of the complaints about the houses on the blog. “You check and see what’s going on in the neighborhood,” she said “People don’t like to fight alone. There’s strength in numbers, you know? There’s more of us than them.”

For other posts about citizens who are using the internet as a tool to track crime and other conditions in their neighborhood and organize their neighbors, read previous posts here and here.

I wonder if something similar might ever happen in the Bronx...?

Here's another example of citizen's using blogs to shine a light on crime: Holla Back NYC, an online forum for visitors, mostly women, to post photographs and stories about their experiences being groped, catcalled or otherwise sexually harassed in public.