Saturday, June 28, 2008

Brooklyn blog helps bust crackhouse

Most neighborhoods in Brooklyn have at least one blog — and in some places, there seems to be one in every house, every bedroom — but not many read like BayRidgeTalk.com, where the subjects over the last year or two veered away from apartment sales and plumbing tips and block parties and sounded more like rat-a-tat police reports.

“Fighting and drug deals going down in the driveway of this house,” one person wrote in 2006 about a home steeped in reports of suspicious activity on 93rd Street in Bay Ridge.


Brooklyn Blog Helps Lead to Drug Raid

Months later, the bloggers are celebrating, days after the police raided the two neighboring homes in question, 346 and 348 93rd Street, between Third and Fourth Avenues, and arrested five people, including three brothers who lived there.

As descriptions of crack houses go, the ones the bloggers gave of the homes on 93rd Street were hardly novel, with stories of addicts slumped on the steps outside and cars coming and going at all hours. Men inside chased strangers away, neighbors said, waving sticks and making threats while the rest of the street peered out behind drawn blinds.

But peering turned to blogging, and blogging turned to action, as neighbors started filing complaints with the 68th Precinct station house and attending Community Board 10 meetings and generally making noise until a narcotics investigation began, leading to the arrests.


It's actually more of a message board like to Astorians...or not.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I recall someone on Astorians asking why people complain on message boards, it's not like it makes news or anything. I guess that guy can eat his hat now.

Anonymous said...

This would never happen on Astorians because all controversial topics are banned.

Anonymous said...

Astorians sucks. I was posting about overdevelopment and all of a sudden I got an e-mail stating that they were cancelling my account.

NativeNYer said...

I wouldn't say Astorians sucks per se, but they do limit what one can say there. Sort of like this government we have in Washington that tells the media what to say or show on television. Plus contrary to popular opinion, Astorians isn't all hipsters and yuppies complaining about there not being enough starbucks and too many "euro trash", it is also regular working class folks, like myself, who just need an outlet and a way to connect to the community in this whole disjointed NYC way of life that we have come to accept as the norm these days.

Anonymous said...

I wouldn't say Astorians sucks per se, but they do limit what one can say there.

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Its like everything else in that community - you just go along and never never speak out of turn.

I think the politicans control Astorians, because they take some odd positions on things that always seem to mirror official line, like Hillary Clinton is great, knocking development as a big no no (at least as of year ago), bike ridiing is fanatastic, Con Edison is a bully, the local elected officials are sooooo wonderful, etc etc

Anonymous said...

The don't say anthing much about how the local shopping is going down the tubes, the community is starting the downhill slide with overdevelopment, illegal conversions, or absentee landlords.

But boy oh boy. A new Mexcian or Bangaldeshi, Brazilian or 'Mediterranean' read 'North African' restaurant opens up and post after post after post and they just go crazy.

Odd group indeed!