Long before a video of a Baltimore policeman berating a skateboarder in the Inner Harbor became a YouTube sensation, crime was one of the hottest Internet topics from the city.
Most days, there are more blog posts from Baltimore about crime than about the Orioles, politics or practically any other subject, according to blog trackers like blogpulse and Ice Rocket. Call it the Wire-ization of Baltimore, but the topic continues to shape the identity and perception of the city. At least a half-dozen blogs focus on crime in and around the city.
Some, like Marcie Brennan's smartly edited Baltimorecrime blog, mainly link to the day's crime news from the large media outlets, adding snark and outrage.
Others, like Chris Nelson's burgersub.org, offer a just-the-facts-ma'am accounting of major crime. His site maps murders in Baltimore and D.C. (and in recent weeks began stretching as far as the Delmarva Peninsula and south-central Pennsylvania, although those more sparsely populated areas are not going to add much to his burden.)
Four years ago, Colin Drane secured a patent for the "trunkanizer," an invention to help organize groceries in the backs of mini-vans and cars. Now he's trying to invent something to help folks organize their brains about crime in Baltimore.
His Web site CrimeBaltimore.com plots everything from murder to vandalism. Detailed crime-mapping was once available only to police agencies and programs like "CitiStat" that Martin O'Malley introduced as mayor to employ technology to help fight crime. Now, though, it's more widely available with the rise of cheap mapping programs on Google and elsewhere. Drane's information comes from various sources, not all of them verified, including someone reporting the other day on a Yahoo news group that a thief tossed a brick through a window in Guilford and made off with a big-screen TV.
"Eight years ago, who knows what the costs would have been to do something like this - certainly astronomical compared to what it is right now," said Drane, 37 and a self-described semi-retired entrepreneur. "We're crime-agnostic. Whatever's being reported, we'll map it. We don't have an agenda. Information is power."
Gerard "Buz" Busnuk, who retired as a captain from the Baltimore Police Department in 2001, began writing at buzoncrime.blogspot.com last month. He knew the potential of such a forum from the popularity of an Internet listserv he contributed to years ago as head of security for the Charles Village benefits district.
He launched the blog after reading that it would be a good way to drum up business for his security consulting business. After six weeks, and no new clients from it, he's not so sure about that.
Writing about crime-fighting as a former city policeman, with ex-colleagues still on the force, can be tricky, he acknowledges. His more forceful posts are aimed at the topic of security, particularly on college campuses.
"Many of my colleagues in the campus security community are feverishly spending money to buy various emergency notification systems, because, apparently the lessons learned from Virginia Tech, it is believed, include some kind of emergency notification system," he wrote on Feb. 5. "Buz thinks that they might be useful, not so much to help in an incident such as this, but just so that the school can say they have it to defend itself in a lawsuit.
"Even if such a system were in place at VT, it would not have been used because the police thought the incident was confined and under control. In fact there were officers in the dorm where the original two murders happened, but did not say anything about it to students who were entering and leaving. Besides, what would one say? 'Gee, we've got 2 people killed here, so watch out?!' "
The various crime blogs are strangely entertaining but don't offer much hope toward solutions. If you're searching for that, try something like the audaciousideas.org blog of George Soros' Open Society Institute in Baltimore. And at least on the department level, the city police don't view the blogs as breaking new ground.
"I have found most of the blogs that talk about public safety are driven by mainstream media reports already. My experience with the blogs that cover Baltimore crime is they offer a fairly limited perspective from not a very diverse group of people," said Sterling Clifford, a spokesman for the Baltimore Police Department.
"I've never gotten a call from one of the bloggers themselves," he said. "The blogosphere tends to skid off the rails and say we should deport people to the moon, but to the extent that blogs about Baltimore crime keep people talking about it and paying attention and discussing possible solutions, that's a good thing."
The traffic suggests they certainly have their fans, however.
"As disturbing and cynical as some of the posts are with regards to actual Baltimore crime, I found that the writing style is highly informative, and some of it morbidly entertaining," wrote an admirer of the Baltimorecrime blog. "I'm pretty sure that my Dad, my brother, and my dearest friend Lynn will suffer cardiac arrests once they find out that I've developed a weakness for reading the Baltimore Crime blog. But I honestly like the entries. I mean, seriously, with a tag line like 'The stupidity of it is astounding,' who wouldn't be engaged?"
andrew.ratner@baltsun.com
Andrew Ratner, a former technology reporter, is Today editor of The Sun.