Here Comes Everybody

[prog]

Some young punks have apparently been freely harassing Davis Square residents for some time now. That thread begins with someone describing how he was assaulted and slapped around by them, apparently in broad daylight and with people all around. The many comments that follow form a story about how this same group has been making trouble in the

Comments

[ahkond]

Are you making a Finnegans Wake reference there?

[prog]

Indirectly, insofar it's the title of Shirky's book!

[keimel]

Get all your WMA folks together and roam the streets with Shinai.

;)

But more seriously, more people need to wander around there with video cameras and catch the SOBs in the act. Get all YouTube on the town/city/county/state and MAKE them enforce the laws.

If everyone that commented on the OP called the local cops to check in with "How are the stepped up patrols going?" every day, you'd get some results. Platitudes to the victim in LJ will only go so far (read, nowhere) to getting the punks taken care of.

(yes, this is easy for the country guy to say, as the biggest trouble I get is kids driving ATVs up and down the road - but still keeping off my lawn, at least).

[prog]

I thought briefly of making a followup post to the community suggesting a camera-toting flash mob, or something. But even if there was a way to guarantee that people showed up when the thugs were there, I can see several ways in which this would go badly.

[radtea]

I don't think a camera-toting flash-mob is a good idea, but I do think that carrying and using a camera, discreetly, is a good thing. As this guy's experience shows, it can be more valuable to get a photograph than to actually interfere, counter-intuitive as that might seem.

Imagine if someone had been able to come up to him afterwards and say, "Here are my pictures of what happened." The cops would probably have been willing to take action at that point.

I've never witnessed a mugging, but have interfered with fights (in broad daylight, downtown, with lots of people about passing by, and my g/f telling me to keep moving and not get involved...) By just standing very close and watching intently you can have an amazingly disruptive effect on your average thug because it confuses the hell out of them and divides their extremely limited attention. I doubt I'd do it with a gang, though. With odds against you're inviting escalation, which is never a good thing.

But a picture taken from a safe distance is gold in court.