Recently, in Atlanta, a couple posted a surveillance video on YouTube of three men burglarizing their home. Soon after, the three men were caught. It’s just one of the ways that social media is helping to decrease crime.
Social Media Increases Communication
The rise of web 2.0 and social media has enabled everyone to communicate faster and easier than ever before in the history of the planet. And these new communication tools are useful for more than just telling all your Facebook friends that you’re having spaghetti for dinner, they are having an impact on real-world situations, including crime.
Communication Decreases Crime
As little as 10 years ago, communicating with your local police department was a difficult, time-consuming process. Sure, citizens could read about crime in the weekly police blotter in the newspaper, or maybe hear about a handful of high-profile crimes on the local news, but to find out about crime in one’s own neighborhood required slogging down to the station, filling out paper work, and waiting. Likewise, police could do little to inform the public about crime in their area, save going door-to-door to tell everyone in the neighborhood what was going on.
Today, police and citizens have virtual two-way communication through web 2.0 technology like CrimeReports, Twitter, Facebook, or even text messaging. And as the avenues of communication increase, crime decreases. Eric Baumer, a criminologist at Florida State University in Tallahassee said, “It’s interesting in the sense that [crime has gone down] while the ability of citizens to surveil and connect to police” has gone up.
Citizens Want to Connect
When citizens have the ability to communicate and connect with their local law enforcement, they use it. If going down to the station to request crime reports was too time consuming in the past, now citizens can simply go to CrimeReports and see crime with a few clicks of a mouse or follow their local PD on Twitter.
With ease of communication comes more widespread adoption. Now that communication with law enforcement has become easier through web 2.0 tools, more people are tuning in, following, friending, and engaging in the conversation. And when more people are getting the information they need to keep themselves safe, more people are using that knowledge to protect themselves and prevent crime.
Get on the crime map at CrimeReports.com
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