Crime in the UK – FaceBook alternative

Hi Scott,
I am a UK 57 year old male ex serviceman (RAF) who has been reading your great site daily for a couple of years. The fascinating mix of interesting, adventurous characters on the forum is compulsive reading and CR is on my shortlist as an affordable retirement area. I am hardly of the facebook generation but a recent incident led me to choose it as a vehicle for getting an important message out to the local population.

Your description of a pleasant evening with friends pretty much sums up how we spent a Saturday night on the 25 April. Returning home at 10.30pm we turned a corner and found ourselves surrounded by about 15 teenagers. My wife was verbally abused and spat at; I was physically assaulted, left semi-conscious with a fractured eye socket. The police were called and we spent 30 mins driving round to identify the assailants. They had disappeared. When I suggested we review CCTV recordings the driver stated the facility wasn’t manned and rarely was. He said the Cotswold District Council were responsible for the system.

By Monday (doped up on painkillers) I was feeling utterly powerless, so decided to priority mail the faceless “crime reduction team” at the council for answers. 48 hrs later no response. I looked at facebook and thought it was the best medium to use in a campaign. I set up an identity “Closedcircuit Cirencester” including a photograph of my injury on the profile and a summary of the incident. Then I mailed the local newspaper. http://www.wiltsglosstandard.co.uk/search/4328371.Resident_mounts_Facebook_campaign_about_lack_of_CCTV/

Things started to happen.

The usual woolly political excuses “crime is reducing, the town is as safe as ever etc” The truth was the CCTV contract had been falling apart since Jan 2008 and had not been renewed. Individuals and retailers were contacting me with their stories of a lawless town with teenage thugs running wild. Then 2 months later another assault resulting in a death of a 25 year old. This may not be anything new in a city but in a small picturesque, farming community town (pop 19,000), it was the first occurrence of its kind in decades.

A facebook friend? advised me to start a “cause” under the auspices of facebook parallel to my profile – this attracted 270 more. As I write, total supporters are about 1000 including signatures on petitions that I have placed at venues around town.

This I guess is a snapshot of life in the UK at the moment and its going to get worse.

The local politicians are now taking notice and I thank Facebook for the providing the medium.

Steve.