“This collective mentality that Nextdoor allows us from a crime and public safety standpoint is really beneficial,” says Goodroe. “It alerts neighbors of all ages and backgrounds to what’s out there.”
In the first wave of online social crime-fighting, police used networks like Facebook and Twitter to ask for help identifying images of suspects and to broadcast messages over a large area like an entire city. Now a new, more targeted set of networks like Nextdoor are allowing residents to better police themselves and police to reach residents more efficiently. “What we saw happening very early on with Nextdoor is people were coming to us saying, ‘We’d like to be able to include our local police officer in our neighborhood,’” says co-founder Sarah Leary, who estimates about 20 percent of Nextdoor content is related to crime and safety.
The scam run by the burglars in Goodroe’s neighborhood worked like this: Two men carrying magazines knock on a door. If a homeowner answers, he gets a pitch for magazine subscriptions from one guy while the other scopes his valuables. If no one answers, the burglars let themselves in.
In years past, few homeowners bothered reporting such vaguely fishy visits. But with Nextdoor small suspicions can be easily pieced together, fusing into a troublesome pattern.
“Time zero, someone posted something, saying, ‘It may be nothing but, you know, I had these people come to the door and they were suspicious because they were selling magazines but they couldn’t tell me what the charity was that they were doing it for,” Goodroe says. “Not more than 10 or 20 minutes later, someone else posted saying, ‘Yeah those people came to our place as well, it’s very weird.’”
“That happened to maybe three or four different homes. And finally one home, when these people came and knocked on the door, called the cops.”
Contacted by a Nextdoor user, the Oakland Police Department took a description, tracked down the suspects, and found them in the midst of a burglary. Goodroe, who now keeps a close eye on Nextdoor postings, credits the bust to the site.
Tools like Nextdoor and Nixle, a text and e-mail alert system used by police, are not just altering the landscape of social networking. They’re also changing the ways cities across the U.S. ensure safety — helping residents look out for one another, helping cops make highly targeted disclosures and inquiries, and turning the tables on criminals who have long availed themselves of sophisticated communications systems and carefully plotted strategies. The change is being driven less by cutting-edge technology than by new demands for police transparency, by budget cuts, and by calls for greater efficiency and efficacy on the part of law enforcement.
If crime-fighting social networks continue to attract users and spread geographically, they could help police departments reduce crime rates while forging deeper and more meaningful relationships with the communities they patrol.
by Ryan Tate, Wired | Read more:
Illustration: Ross Patton/Wired
