For local blog, suspect's privacy trumps community safety
In their coverage of a vicious mugging at 17th & Harrison on Tuesday, local blog Capitol Hill Seattle reprinted the account of a community member who witnessed the incident firsthand. While the entire letter is worth reading for the vivid scenario it eloquently recreates (which explains the bottle of wine, pictured at right), that's not what this post is about.Instead, take a look at the first paragraph:
I heard a commotion behind me at the west corner of NE 17th and Harrison right under the street light. A young couple walking to their car from On 15th Video, were being mugged by 5 teenage african american youths maybe 13 - 15 years old. There were 3 girls and 2 boys, most wearing hoodies, some in denim jackets, one girl with [CHS has snipped this part to remove personal description]Something's nagging me about this. Why would you remove the "personal description" of somebody potentially linked to violent crime in the same neighborhood you strive to keep informed through your blog? By the way that sentence opens up ("one girl with...") it seems unlikely that this personal information would be anything as detailed as the girl's name or home address...which means there's no excuse for editing this section out.
I e-mailed the author of CHS asking why this information was removed, and he responded with the following:
because i could not personally verify the account and i felt the details were specific enough to identify somebodyI might be missing something here: but why would you not want to provide details that could allow police and neighbors to identify a suspected criminal? And why would such details be fair game if they had come directly from an eyewitness, but not directly from a letter written by that eyewitness? This line of reasoning makes no sense.
if i had talked to police and received the description or even heard the description directly from the eyewitness, i would have printed it.
make sense?
Maybe I'm old-fashioned, and I have nothing against CHS or its authors. But if you have a blog that is meant to serve as an outlet for the community, it would make sense that you put all your efforts towards helping to remove criminals from that community. Deleting the personal description of a street thug, for whatever reason, goes completely against that logic.
Whatever. The people who do need that information most -- the police -- can make it plenty available.
Have you called them?
We don't print specific descriptions from unverified sources.
If the police put out a description and needed help finding the perp, we'd surely lend a hand. As we have many times.
BTW, I hope this is the best possible post you could cook up with information from me because it will be the last. You've written to me before. We've corresponded. To decide to post something like this without engaging in the full context of your 'conversation' with me is really lame.
Nice work alienating one of the few people following your work and supporting your site.
Taking it kind of personally, don't you think J? I have nothing against you.
I simply didn't agree (and still don't) with your decision to withhold certain details of a mugging suspect. Asking me whether I've called the police is akin to telling all your readers, "there's somebody assaulting people in your neighborhood ! to find out more please call...". Absurd, and of no use. You had information - information that as far as I could tell was nothing as identifiable as a name or address - and should do the right thing by printing it.
I don't know what you mean by "without engaging in the full context of [our] 'conversation' ", but I couldn't care less about your support - especially if it's only given when I don't call you on your bullshit.
Ah well. Even if the correspondence we had will be "our last," as you threaten...at least I can sleep easy knowing that you were kind enough to grace me with an e-mail response once before. Gotta treasure the little things in life, right?
"Nice work alienating one of the few people following your work and supporting your site."
I'm really gay for girl fights, I had a friend who use to wear nail varnish, he wasn't queer, it was just his way of saying he was too lazy to locker-room it out and that he'd probably put a pellet in your loaf if you pissed him off.
People use to avoid him when he had a rental, room for two fear syndrome. it is funny how you can actually hire spades, I mean, I don't hate anybody so much I won't spend at least a few bucks.
What was I saying, yeah, girl fights, I had a Japanese girl friend, she liked me coz rock stars hung out, that merchandise thang,
as soon as they work out how to spell their stripper girlfriend's name, they out there in society meeting relevant people with high tone lives to lose, to put meat on da lyrical framework,
"we have strippers and pizza later"
Fuck you
I'm selling your fuckin' tee shirts and I'm keeping all the money, and your stripper girlfriend is gonna to help me spend it,
Girl fights are like that. I was saying, this Japanese girlfriend,she use to slap my face all the time, I asked her why, she said she liked the noise.
If a fuckin nutjob slapped my face I'd put my boot so far up his reeking ass his teeth would paint an oval on the wall opposite.
It is different with girls, ya buy them something, that way you don't get bitch slapped for a while.
Lets all kiss and make up
Be dovey for each oher.
Tazia