Every Tuesday and Thursday, we run down what’s going on in local Internet discussion groups.

columbia_heights
So many people are getting mugged in the 3rd District that even the Post picked up on it. The same day that the paper of record stated the obvious, colleenleyrer1 told two stories—a relative’s and her own—of how thugs made things bad before cops made things worse. First, three unarmed men robbed her cousin in Adams Morgan, beating him till he started to bleed internally. He struck back, chased them to their car, and read the license tags to 911 as the car drove off. When he found two officers and said what happened, they said to wait there; they’d call dispatch. He waited 20 minutes. No one came, and no one could find a record of his 911 call. colleenleyrer1’s own tale was that she saw a man breaking into her neighbor’s house. She and a housemate told police to approach the neighbor’s alley door. Instead, the cops went through her house to get there, and the burglar escaped. “I give the police credit for at least trying in this instance, but I don’t think they were really listening to us when we explained what was going on,” she wrote.

newhilleast
Gunshots or fireworks? The late-evening explosions on the southeast side of Capitol Hill kept guesses coming through last week. “I saw large white flashes out the back so I think they were somewhere in the alley behind 17th bet. D & E,” dscroft wrote Oct. 9. He added, with a poetic touch, “their measured beat and the brightness of the light leads me to believe they were of Chinese origin…” He reassured another poster, but kimba414 refused to take false comfort. On Oct. 12, she wrote, “I was sitting at the computer that night, heard the first bangs, looked out the window, and saw, across the roofs of the storage sheds in the alley, some flashes of light against the backs of the houses over on E Street. The noises/flashes didn’t quite sound or look like fireworks to me.”

tenleytown
kdell42 and her husband were waiting for an elevator in Bethesda. It took its time arriving, and the two had decided to use the stairs instead. Two well-dressed men expressed concern because her husband was using a walker; they said the elevator was nearly there. Once it came, one of the men dropped a stack of brochures on the elevator floor. People watched him gather them up. In a grocery line two hours later, the poster’s husband said his wallet was gone. One of his credit cards already listed a $2,500 purchase; the charge was rejected. “Because the pickpocketing occurred in Montgomery County, our DC Police Precinct isn’t recording it,” kdell42 wrote on Oct. 12. “This concerns me because our pickpockets seem to be operating in both jurisdictions hoping back and forth across the District line.” 2nd District Commander Andy Solberg replied on Oct. 16 that the cops had just locked up a Tenleytown pickpocket and were looking for others who had helped him.