social and crime

Police See Social Media Fuel Crime -- WSJ Publication info: Dow Jones Institutional News ; New York [New York]. 25 Nov 2017.

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U.S. print edition of The Wall Street Journal (November 25, 2017).

CHICAGO -- Rukiya Winston, a 16-year-old 10th-grader in one of this city's most violent South Side neighborhoods,

has sworn off social media.

She's disconnecting from what she sees as a major part of the culture of violence around her.

"It takes things to a whole new level. You see people get into it with someone (on Facebook) and the next day they

are beaten up or shot," said Ms. Winston. "It is just too much."

Facebook and other platforms have emerged as new frontiers in the fight against violent crime that continues to

grip major cities.

In Chicago, which is on track to have more than 600 murders for the second year in a row, a number it had been

below for over a decade prior, community leaders and police say the immediacy of these platforms has played a

major role in escalating disputes, while also providing more evidence that can aid arrests and convictions.

"It pours an accelerant on what was already there," said Eric Sussman, the first assistant state's attorney for

Chicago's Cook County.

The Chicago Police Department and prosecutors don't keep data on how many instances of violence were

provoked by an exchange on social media, but they say anecdotally that they are seeing a rise in the number of

"petty conflicts that have leapt from social media platforms to violent crimes on the street." A Wall Street Journal

tally found at least 100 cases nationally where an act of violence was streamed on just one of these platforms,

Facebook Live, since it was launched in early 2016.

"Unfortunately, in too many instances, these conflicts are resolved with a gun," said a Chicago police spokesman.

Prosecutors and law enforcement agencies in other cities, including Dallas and Wilmington, Del., say social media

mirrors and contributes to gang-related behavior on their streets, too. Police in Dallas earlier this year attributed a

string of drive-by shootings to incidents in which one gang challenged another and posted their location on

Facebook or Instagram, prompting an act of violence.

Tatyanna Lewis, an 18-year-old from Chicago, was in a running Facebook feud over a man with Chynna Stapleton,

24, in mid-May, when Ms. Stapleton allegedly ran over Ms. Lewis with a car, pinning her to a tree. Ms. Stapleton

has been charged with first-degree murder, to which she has pleaded not guilty.

In Chicago, violence on the South Side has, in part, been fueled by the proliferation of drill rap videos, defined by

dark, grim and nihilistic lyrics that sometimes insult a rival gang and its members.

Community leaders in the Woodlawn neighborhood point to the recent murders of Sherrod Rhyme, 18, and Terry

Barry, 21, both drill rappers who were shot in June and September respectively.

In a recent video uploaded on YouTube, Mr. Barry can be seen rapping while brandishing a gun and insulting a rival

gang.

"They got involved in this world, and within the course of three or four months, they ended up dead," said Donnell

Williams, who works with middle school youth at the Sunshine Gospel Ministries, a faith-based community

By Shibani Mahtani

organization.

A Chicago police spokeswoman said it didn't have any information that linked the videos to the killings of Mr.

Rhyme and Mr. Barry, but that no arrests have been made in either case.

Mr. Williams described a petty yet high-stakes world where drill rappers would make a disrespectful reference to a

dead member of a rival gang, sometimes saying they are smoking their ashes in a cigarette. This would then lead

to a retaliatory shooting.

"It is a catalyst that keeps the tension and negativity going," he said.

Steve Gates, Chicago program director for the Youth Advocate Program, a nonprofit that works with at-risk youth,

says many of the young men he works with turn to rap videos to overcome the hopelessness they feel in their lives,

faced with few job prospects and blight in their neighborhoods.

"They go extra hard on projecting this image, and showing that they can hurt somebody and have all these guns

and be respected for that," Mr. Gates said. "It is the same story as on the streets, but just on a different platform --

the only platform that they think they have a voice."

In Wilmington, law-enforcement officials and prosecutors say they see the same escalation of violence through

social media.

The exchanges, however, arm prosecutors with evidence, including Facebook photos and tags, that they can use in

court.

"If you have a defendant and you are trying to get some large sense of whom they are affiliated with, what other

activities they might be involved in and what may have led to their crime, there's information available publicly,"

said Delaware Attorney General Matthew Denn.

Chicago police have invested heavily in data-driven crime reduction technology over the past year, building out

eight "nerve centers" in the most violent police districts, providing a wealth of information about the neighborhood

and offenders.

The centers, which cost $1.3 million each, integrate data like live-feeds from cameras in the neighborhood and a

suspect's criminal record. Police say this technology has contributed to a 13% drop in murders, compared with this

time last year. Separately, crime analysts also review open source accounts and monitor gang conflicts through

social media.

Chicago prosecutors and officials have repeatedly called on Facebook and other tech giants for more proactive

action to help curb violence.

Cook County Commissioner Richard Boykin said he facilitated a meeting this summer between Facebook Chief

Executive Mark Zuckerberg and young men from a violent South Side neighborhood where they discussed how

easy it is to get guns and drugs, and the role of social media in provoking violence.

Commissioner Boykin said a team at Facebook has been in "constant contact" with city and county officials since

then.

"[Facebook] is getting better with it, they're obviously very concerned, " he said. "There's a lot of work we have to do

to stop the drugs and guns flowing into our city, and social media is an area we focus some of that attention."

A spokesperson for Facebook said that the company will double the number of people working on safety and

security -- reviewing content on Facebook for dangerous and hateful speech -- to 20,000 from 10,000 in 2018.

Threats to someone's personal safety violates the platform's community standards, the spokesperson added.

Facebook has also invested in Artificial Intelligence tools to monitor content on Facebook Live, and has simplified

the process by which people report problematic videos online.

"People don't want false news or hate speech or bullying or any of the bad content that we're talking about," Mr.

Zuckerberg said on an earnings call earlier this month. "So to the extent that we can eradicate that from the

platform, that will create a better product."

Deepa Seetharaman contributed reporting to this article.

Write to Shibani Mahtani at [email protected]

(END)

November 25, 2017 02:32 ET (07:32 GMT) DETAILS

Subject: Violence; Crime; Community; Neighborhoods; Cities; Social networks; Murders

&murder attempts; Gangs

Business indexing term: Subject: Social networks

Location: Cook County Illinois; United States--US

People: Sussman, Eric

Company / organization: Name: Facebook Inc; NAICS: 518210, 519130; Name: Police Department-Chicago IL;

NAICS: 922120

Publication title: Dow Jones Institutional News; New York

Publication year: 2017

Publication date: Nov 25, 2017

Publisher: Dow Jones &Company Inc

Place of publication: New York

Country of publication: United States, New York

Publication subject: Business And Economics

Source type: Wire Feed

Language of publication: English

Document type: News

ProQuest document ID: 1968135862

Document URL: https://aiuniv.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/wire-feeds/police-

see-social-media-fuel-crime-wsj/docview/1968135862/se-2?accountid=144459

Copyright: Copyright Dow Jones &Company Inc Nov 25, 2017

Last updated: 2021-10-07

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