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

columbia_heights
“Felton Earls,” Harvard professor, “does interesting work, but I don’t think he’s demonstrated either weakly or conclusively that the efficacy thesis is superior to broken windows,” writes Richard, continuing a discussion sparked by news of black men robbing a taxi passenger. “Interesting work, Richard,” replies Jack. “It appears to me, based on a rather quick reading, that you’re finding ‘broken windows’ to be a valid symptom of a failure of ‘collective efficacy.’” And now, for a musical interlude. “If this was a tribe,” rhymes rapping e-pundit halyadoing, “I might subscribe to the notion that motion with so much emotion and anger and hate has a place in this state for people get wild and once in awhile population control is the rule of the code but we civilized now so let us adhere with helping out brothers and sisters and mothers and get off this topic stop being so myopic.”

CherrydaleCitizens
As city grit continues its infiltration of Arlington, Cherrydale residents are shaken by memories of felonious times past. “Going to Stratford Junior High School there were thug 9th-graders who would ‘rookie’ you if you dared to walk thru the tunnel under Old Dominion Drive,” writes Eric. “(If you got rookied, you usually got most of your clothes ripped up or off you, a few peppermint twists on the cheeks, alot of lipstick all over you, and you went straight home and didn’t come back for a few days out of sheer embarassment.)” That undated time of terror leaves the ’50s looking pretty charming. That’s when the “Cherrydale gang” roamed the redneck ’burb’s roadways and, according to Eric, “brass knuckles and numb-chucks were part of the daily attire.”

MPD-4D
If only robbers could work around your schedule. A woman living on the 5500 block of 8th Street NW came home to grab some lunch on May 24, only to find unspecified “listed items” stolen, according to a police summary of the crime. She didn’t have a phone to call in the invasion, so she went to the police station to report it in person. Stupid move, that. “[She] was informed that she had to make the report from her home and went back to the location,” the summary explains. “As the wait became time consuming, [she] went back to work and called 311 to have the police call her when they arrived on the scene, she was only 7 miles away.” When police eventually arrived, they found that, yeah, “her window screws had been tampered with.”