After a three-year run of service to the public, the Lakeside Crime Watch website is scheduled to disappear as of this weekend.
The site was created as a public forum for expatriate residents to report and track crimes in the community. The content was enhanced with comprehensive information on registering incidents through official channels, common scams and most recently summaries and links to relevant news stories carried by the press.
According to the Crime Watch webmaster, the decision to fold was based primarily on a significant slowdown in postings, presumably because victims aren’t sharing information. However, officials at the local public prosecutor’s office see indications of a downturn in crimes perpetrated against expats, telling the Reporter that hardly any complaints have been made since the end of January.
As recent events connected to organized crime become a hot topic in the community, active net surfers have increasingly turned to other social networks to follow the local buzz, including some that have spread wholesale unsubstantiated rumors. A case in point is a spurious Facebook page registered under the name of Chapala’s Mayor Jesus Cabrera where patently false information about the imposition of a curfew and school closings appeared last week. The mayor’s authentic FB account goes by the name Jesus Cabrera Jimenez.
Early this month, the popular web board chapala.com opened up a new forum dedicated exclusively to the theme of local crime. In the space of five days the section became so overloaded with gossip and off-topic discussion that it was pulled, with crime reports banned on the other forums.
While regular posters slammed the site for censorship, administrator David Tingen says the crime forum derailed because his team of volunteer moderators simply couldn’t keep up with monitoring the high volume of messages to sort out inappropriate comments and other dross.
The demise of lakesidecrime.com leaves a gap for English speakers seeking reliable, up-to-date information on public security issues.