Live For Buzz

A relatively new Buzzer made an interesting post on EWoodBuzz this month about crime concerns. branman1986 writes:

After hearing all the crap that’s going down in EAV, it’s making me a little paranoid…

How good/bad is Edgewood? I know it’s really locationally dependent, with the NW section a little better and the NE section a little worse. I just didn’t know if the lack of public safety posts was due to lack of forum participation or if there was less crime here than in EAV. EAV seems like a warzone.

There’s always been some controversy around crime discussion on EAVBuzz. “Chamber of Commerce” thinking holds that ignorance is bliss and exposing negatives about the neighborhood creates an undue sense of fear. And that’s illustrated in the quote above. I can understand that logic, and there’s some validity to it from the macro view of people “promoting” the neighborhood.

The Buzz, however, isn’t a promotional tool, it’s a community. And in any real-world community, you talk about local issues - good and bad. The Buzz is just an online extension of that; we are the members of the community, and we talk about local issues - good and bad. But just like in the real world, we don’t air our problems to strangers. The Public Safety sections of the Buzz are viewable by members only.

By embracing the tough discussions, the Buzz facilitates the flow of both information and action. The efficiency of online discussions takes the back fence conversation from “Joe’s house got broken in to yesterday” to “and here’s what happened, the description of the suspects, how it’s similar to other crimes and what we can do about it.” We learn about similar crimes in nearby neighborhoods, we know when people are arrested, we learn how to better secure our homes and neighborhood and we learn how to pressure the courts and police to do more about crime.

In other words, we are better informed, more aware and more empowered because we embrace the conversation.

There is, however, a responsibility for Buzzers to understand the purpose and context of the conversation. An individual can choose - as branman1986 did - to be put in fear, or the individual can choose to be empowered by the information. There is a tough balance there, and I have no doubt that undue fear has been put into the mind of more than a few Buzzers. In total, though, I firmly believe the conversation is positive for the community.

And, by the way, the result of branman1986’s inquiry was him being shown that crime in Edgewood is actually significantly higher than in East Atlanta.

On EWood Buzz: Safety in Edgewood (registration required).

This entry was posted on Friday, May 23rd, 2008 at 7:51 am and is filed under East Atlanta, Edgewood. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.