08

The Gaza war thread was again the most active over the weekend but I will skip it since it has been previously discussed. Similarly, I will skip the second most active thread which was the one about a woman in Ohio being charged after miscarrying. After that was a thread titled, "Baby Missing After Carjacking in Georgetown Early This Evening (30th & M St. NW)" and posted in the "Metropolitan DC Local Politics" forum. The thread was started after a report that a vehicle had been carjacked in Georgetown while a 4-month-old baby girl was inside. Not quite a hour later, the baby was discovered outside the door of a house in DC's southeast quadrant (Georgetown is in northwest) where the carjackers apparently dropped her off. The car has still not been recovered as far as I know. This thread represents almost all that is wrong with crime discussions on DCUM and most other mediums. On the one hand are posts from those simply interested in obtaining or sharing facts and expressing concern. I have no issue, of course, with those posts. But, other posters seem to simply be triggered by any mention of crime in a thread's title and rush to post reflexive talking points regardless of their relevance. There were a number of complaints about ANC 3C, which represents Cleveland Park. This crime was in a completely different ward, not to mention ANC district. Similarly, posters rushed to blame the DC Council with one poster wrongly asserting that the Council had attempted to change the law so that offenses such as this would not be considered kidnapping. Ironically, the tweet that the poster embedded to support his allegation actually said the opposite, but I guess the poster didn't bother reading it completely. There, of course, were the normal complement of racist posts that I had to delete. Much of the focus of the thread was on the mother involved. She had apparently left the vehicle running with the child inside, but it was not clear why she left the car. Information provided by police said that she claimed to have had a flat tire but witness reports circulating on social media said that she had gone into a store. It is not clear how a car with a flat tire could drive around DC for a hour or more and some posters suggested that the woman and invented the tire explanation to avoid legal problems as a result of leaving the child unattended. At any rate, the fact that the mother was not in the vehicle when it was taken caused the crime to be reclassified as car theft rather than carjacking. There was also discussion about what public officials describe as the difficulty of prosecuting carjacking and car theft. When stolen vehicles are recovered, apparently fingerprints can't be used as evidence because the cars may have passed through multiple drivers and it is not clear which had stolen it. Discussion also touched on whether or not an Amber Alert had been issued. Police said that they were in the process of preparing one when the baby was found.