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

Brookland
Dissatisfied with cops’ sluggish response to non-emergency 311 calls, Brian tries to buck society’s commonly held notions of what constitutes a 911 emergency. With a touch of semantic massaging, the Brooklander can turn a noisy Catholic U party into a five-alarm crisis. “[D]rinking alcohol in public, public urination, littering, DWI, etc. these are immediate, *SERIOUS CRIMES* covered by specific statutes in the DC Code,” he writes. “If you are losing sleep (i.e., your health), your ‘peace’ is being disturbed after say, 10 p.m. at night…than I would argue that it is an exigent, criminal event, worthy of a call to 911.” Anyone bother to think about this for more than a few seconds? Oh, there you are, Kelly: “What if ya’lls calls diverted a cop from an armed robbery, car jacking or was the difference between apprehending a murderer and leaving a crime unsolved?” Nice effort, but Brian’s not persuaded. “One person’s indigestion may just as easily be another’s fatal heart attack in progress,” he rationalizes, after looking up “emergency” on his Mac’s dictionary. “Accordingly, ‘emergency’ may rightfully be given very broad interpretation by the victim (or Samaritans) calling.”

Mount Pleasant DC
Councilmember Jim Graham heralds the addition of two more crime-fighting surveillance cameras to Ward 1. “We already have a crime camera at 14th and Girard,” he boasts. “That will now be joined by a camera at Georgia and Morton, which will scan the area of the small mall there. And another will be on 18th Street just north of Belmont. I think both locations are excellent choices which I hope will soon be joined by others.” Then, perhaps in a wink to his civil-liberties-minded voters, Graham takes the opportunity to express his rather mealy-mouthed, cover-all-the-bases stance on said cameras. “Let me repeat that I am opposed to cameras used for surveillance of First Amendment expressions. I have consistently voted against such use. However, to my mind, cameras do have an appropriate though limited utility to dislodge embedded crime. However, police must be prepared to give chase once that dislodgment takes place.” Got that?

WardOneDC
Laurie Collins e-mails the group a Washington Post op-ed article in which Colbert I. King chides a Linda Cropp supporter for delivering the columnist a 146-page, dirt-filled dossier on Adrian Fenty (and requesting anonymity). Dominic Sale, a known Cropp booster and former Mount Pleasant advisory neighborhood commissioner, then chastens Laurie for disseminating the King column. “Laurie, I understand how someone as zealous as you are about Fenty could see this article as advantageous to…his campaign, but have you even considered the downside?” he asks. “The sad fact is that negative campaining has been proven again and again to work, and you have become the unwitting messenger of information that could do more harm than good to your candidate’s prospects.” But Laurie seems to have gotten just what she wanted. “Ok, whatever you say Dominic,” she writes. “You are so bait-able.…”