Last week, six guys came into a party that i was cohosting and stole my stuff. The six came together and left together. Tonight, a dear friend found a picture of one of the guys online:
One party attender stated the this guy asked for the bathroom (where my purse was ripped apart for valuable items).
I contacted the photographer and he sent me the rest of the pictures where you can see more of the guys (time stamps: 1:24AM-1:39AM).
Another party attender accidentally walked in the bathroom when the actual robber was going through my bag. He didn’t realize what was going on at the time, but he was able to ID the actual robber from this picture:
“He’s in this picture, but his face isn’t visible. He’s the one standing closest to the orange door with the short hair and the green t-shirt. He was the tallest, least hip, and most drunk of the group. I wish you had something more identifying. That is definitely him.”
Because these guys racked up my credit cards (and used the web from my phone), it’s now a felony fraud investigation as well as a robbery. Thanks everyone for helping me track down more information. If anyone has any clues, do let me know. Needless to say, the bloggers are going faster than the detectives. Thank you thank you thank you to those3 who are looking out for me!
Update 3/23: Detective Jewett (the detective on this case) said that i could post his email if anyone has additional information and wants to send it directly to him. (Be nice! Don’t send anything not related to the case, cause he’s being open and helpful.)
Detective Jewett: jason [dot] jewett [at] ci [dot] austin [dot] tx [dot] us
Austin Police Report Number: 2004-501-1946
More pictures:
Now, what do you think we can do next?
Add him as a user on Friendster, and see who adds him to their network?
(that’s actually really funny.)
but getting your purse ripped to shreds/stolen at your own party? super not fucking funny. glad i was getting photo happy at the end of the party. i email you a few more, i hope they’re helpful.
can EFF-Austin turn into PowerPuff Girls in this situation?
I have some ties to the Austin Hells Angels, who are, surprisingly, not into Meth and other forms of crime, but run a runaway house and donate heavily to other harm reduction programs. They’re also relatively scary, still. So if nothing else works….
Post that in the austin community over at Livejournal: http://www.livejournal.com/userinfo.bml?user=austincommunity
And so we witness the power of social networks…these guys are living free on borrowed time with ‘The Network’ now on the asses….Good Luck Danah!
Jes – good call!
And i posted a Craigslist Missed Connections:
http://austin.craigslist.org/mis/27116349.html
I like the friendster idea. Don’t forget myspace.com, too. There’s a lot of people from here on that network. It’s too bad so many people are a$$holes, you know? Best of luck and I’ll keep my eyes open.
NYPD Blog: Bigger than Dennis Franz’s ass
It’s no secret that I am a big fan of the blogosphere. Blogs are growing more and more popular everyday. They have already begun to change the face of politics as we once knew it. They are giving people who
New Face of Solving Crimes
Danah Boyd got robbed at a SXSW party. Now we have a picture of the robber.
It is quite weird to see this cristal clear picture of him…
Either a pipe dream or a job for the detectives, but if they used your card at an exxon, could the exxon have surveillance cameras that may have recorded the licence plate or (at the very least) an a pic of the guy to serve as verified ID?
Sadly, it’s all outdoor pumps, not approaching the cameras. As for the detectives, i just called the one in charge – Detective Jewett. I don’t think he’s nearly as determined as i am to make certain that these assholes are tracked down.
Now that i have pictures, i have this deep desire to use the power of the interweb to make certain that they learn that they can’t get away with such behavior.
Go on, flag it as “best off” 🙂
Blogosphere’s Most Wanted
While cohosting a SXSW party in Austin, danah boyd was ripped off by one or more of a half dozen folks who arrived late and tore into her purse, taking and using her credit cards. They took other valuables, all…
i will post this info also at orkut and tribe.net… maybe someone out there knows them. good luck.
NYPD Blog: Bigger than Dennis Franz’s ass
It’s no secret that I am a big fan of the blogosphere. Blogs are growing more and more popular everyday. They have already begun to change the face of politics as we once knew it. They are giving people who
Webloggers Fight Crime
Webloggers fight crime in Austin, Texas. Weblogging and social networking sites united equals one tough crime fighting method.
This is great…a bunch of pictures of black people. I can’t help but be shocked at the insensitivity of the poster.
Mobobbers: the nets out to gets ya
apophenia: pictures of my robbers
“Last week, six guys came into a party that i was cohosting and stole my stuff. The six came together and left together. Tonight, a dear friend found a picture of one of the guys online:”
moblog gallery of …
You should have known they wrwerewre too well dressed for blogging!
Wow – would you mind clarifying why you think that i’m being insensitive? The purpose of this post is not to throw up a bunch of pictures of random people. There were six guys who stole my personal belongings. There is a police report filed. These are the pictures of those guys.
Hi danah, I’m sorry to hear about the robbery – being robbed in your own home must feel awful. My house was once burgled when I wasn’t home and that felt bad enough. I do wonder about some of the language in this post though. Can you be entirely certain that the people in the pictures are responsible for the theft? I wonder if maybe borrowing some language from the mainstream media and law enforcement might have been helpful, i.e. ‘suspects’ and ‘I am interested in talking to…’
“Wow”, it shows ignorance that you’re worried about the insensitivity of zephoria’s post over THIEVES. What’s color got to do with it???? Quit whining.
Gee. I bet the photos shown of people on the FBI’s most wanted list are “insensitive”, too?
Zephoria, you don’t need a troll to clarify their ignorance. They have already shown and clarified ignorance as it is. 🙂
Foe – actually, i am 100% certain. First, one of my friends caught the one guy in the act, but didn’t realize it until moments after the group left that he hadn’t walked in on the guy peeing, but going through my purse. They left rather abruptly and quickly, with no goodbyes. Second, i had grabbed my smokes from my purse only a few minutes before and this group was the only group to leave between my accessing my purse and the point in which we realized it. Part of the problem is that they aren’t suspects to me; they are a group of people who committed a felony against me. I refuse to cover this in flowerly language just to be mainstream because i’m not a third party in this situation.
Part of the point of unbiased language is because a third party is only operating with anecdotes, not first hand experiences. Law enforcement and mainstream media are counting on informants; they are not the ones experiencing the emotions, having had firsthand contact with the ‘suspects’ etc. The robbery isn’t an ethnographic exercise for me, nor do i want to turn it into such. It is an event that happened in my life for which i have strong emotions and convictions based on detailed moments of interaction with strangers who went from sharing jokes to committing an unacceptable act.
I guess it also depends on what you mean by being helpful.
[Also, i should note that it wasn’t my home; a friend lent us her place to throw a party.]
Fair enough. I guess I was just shocked by the force of your post and starting thinking ‘what if…’. I’ll leave you to it now – good luck resolving it all.
Who Is This Guy?
Collaborative crime-fighting: my buddy danah boyd got her credit cards and phone and stuff ripped off while at a party in Austion at SXSW, and now the blogosphere is looking for this guy and his friends. It leads to…
Help with web justice
I’m not very well connected within Danah’s circles, but perhaps that’s all the more reason to kick this out to…
“actually, i am 100% certain. First, one of my friends caught the one guy in the act, but didn’t realize it until moments after the group left”
How can you be 100% certain? You didn’t see it happen, the person that supposedly did see it happen, didn’t know what was going on when it was actually happening?
I understand that you are a victim here, but the act of posting pictures of people that you think may be suspect is irresponsible and insensitive.
If the girl’s saying she is certain, she is. Why would she make up shit like that and post pics just for kicks? And I don’t think she is being insensitive either, I am sure she would’ve done the same if the pics were of white/brown/yellow/pink/red/whatever guys (or girls for that matter). I can’t speak for her but I didn’t even realize it was a race issue until you guys brought up the insensitivity issue. Now, you are making me wonder and see people by the color of their skin–which wasn’t a big deal to me until now. Thank you very much.
In anycase, I’ve posted the link to the pics on my blog because I believe it is not being insensitive or irresponsible at all.
This whole scenario seems like a scene out of a “Revenge of the Nerds” movie. Some jerks show up and do something awful, nerdy victim says “I’ll show them! I’ll use the power of the Interweb!” Nerd contacts friends, word travels, everyone posts in their blogs, and in the end the jerks get their comeuppance.
Of course, in the movie it would all be more lighthearted, like the jerks would give the nerd a wedgie, and in response their frat house would get filled with rancid pea soup, or something like that. Everyone would have hairstyles from the 80s for some reason too.
Yes, I’m finding humor in serious situations. Ya gotta find space to laugh. 🙂
Will, how would you propose finding strangers that you have only a picture of?
Taking this situation at face value, I have no problem morally or ethically with posting the pictures in order to track these individuals down. Personally, I might have worded the request more like “For the reasons listed below, I THINK the people in these photos stole items from me, can anyone help track them down for me or send the relevant info to the detective investigating this case?”, but I tend to interpret the word “know” a little conservatively.
There is a large question this type of request raises though – how to determine the motivation behind a stranger’s request to help track someone down? In this case the request to contact the police detective directly lends credence to the story and would help me feel ok about supplying information if I had any. Generally though, I have difficulty knowing how to evaluate requests from strangers – a sincere sounding request to “help locate my younger sister who has been missing for the past month” could in reality be “help me locate my ex-girlfriend who I want to make pay for what she did to me”, or “help me locate this person because she is going to testify against me in a murder trial”. How to tell?
I mean, how do we even know that these *allegations* have any basis in fact whatsoever? All we know is:
1) a bunch of pictures of black men have been posted
2) a white person claims that they robbed her
That’s it. Maybe the poster is merely angry because the black men came on to her, and she wants revenge for this perceived slight?
The fact is, “wow,” that the issue of race hadn’t been raised until you brought it up. Do you think the respective races make Danah’s claims less credible? If not, why bother noting it? If so, who is the “racist” here?
It’s insensitive because they guys were black? If they were white suburban frat boys y’all’d be put’n together a big self-rightouse PC posse.
“Good LAWD! We’s racist because some poor innocent black folk who dint know no better robbed us.”
“Maybe the poster is merely angry because the black men came on to her, and she wants revenge for this perceived slight?”
Or maybe the poster isn’t white, isn’t a woman, wasn’t at a party. Maybe these aren’t “photographs” but CGI! We might be living in the Matrix!
One thing’s for sure: racism is afoot.
And open herself up to a potential lawsuit? I don’t think so. These are serious allegations, and you’d have to be pretty fucking stupid to not only make them up but post them on the internet.
I think this could make the evening news. Somebody should write this up and send it to the local TV news guys.
It’s a real shock that those guys stole something
Very novative way to get your stuff back! Congratulations. Since I’m back in the country I don’t really think I see these guys. But I’ll post an article about it my log.
Well we live in a sad world sometimes, but at least in todays world we can count on each other for help where sometimes Justice or the Police are simply overloaded with work!
Good luck in finding your stuff, and let’s always be on the safe side 🙂
On Prend Soin De Soi!
Boris.
What a pinhead. You let a bunch of strangers into your (borrowed) place and then you are amazed that they robbed you? It boggles…
What a pinhead. You let a bunch of strangers into your (borrowed) place
They were crashers, doofus. It looks like there was a big crowd at the party, which is probably why they chose to crash it. And she was co-hosting it, so there were probably a lot of strangers (to her) there.
it always bums me out when someone comes onto a post like this and steers it off track and next thing you know, everyone’s talking about anything but the issue at hand. just ignore the person that brought up racism (leave them to go yell fire in a movie theatre) and track down the people you think stole from you. good luck.
racism, shmacism.
MetaFilter Cops?
Dieser MetaFilter-Beitrag testet die Bereitschaft der Blogosphere bei der Jagd nach vermeintlichen Dieben zu helfen um diese zu identifizieren. Denn sie sollen auf einer Party was gestohlen haben a…
Bastards. Sorry to hear that Danah. Hope you find ’em
Wow – Theives are theives regardless of race. I’m as sure of that as I am that you are a total fuckpot.
If these aren’t the guys, then someone from the party who invited them will ante up and clear their name.
If they are, then maybe they’ll get caught and that will be 6 less people who might come and steal your shit. I can’t for the life of understand why you’d have a problem with that.
Lighten up and focus on the issue.
No matter how you look at it, this was not a robbery. Somebody stole a purse that happened to be lying around – even if that somebody did not receive a written invitation to the party from you, you were not _robbed_. Some of your stuff got stolen (assuming that you are writing the truth).
How come you did not call all the credit card companies and the cell phone companies immediately after you discovered that your purse was missing? So you would have lost only your cash, lipstick, a bit of trust, naivete and time.
btw. you may want to read the Metafilter thread about this if you have not read it yet.
I’m so tired of this shit. White people can’t even say they don’t like brownies w/out someone saying we are racist!! THE GIRL WAS ROBBED. It’s not her fault the dudes were black. Maybe she should have picked whiter robbers huh? It is called REVERSE DISCRIMINATION, or to me just discrimination period. Just b/c you are white everyone assumes you have got something against everyone who isn’t. GET THE FUCK OVER IT. I’m tired of people wrongfully accusing people of racism when it serves them. IT’S NOT FUNNY AND IT SHOULDN’T BE USED AS A CRUTCH. I hope you get your stuff back. I hope everyone leaves you alone about this stupid shit too.
The girl was NOT ROBBED. The girl was doing shots with a bunch of men and somebody stole her purse…
Try get robbed at gunpoint by six men after you leave the subway going home from work, and you will understand the difference.
This type of activity is not uncommon at parties. I’ve had people show up to a small gathering at my place, “friend of a friend” that was invited, then apparently unlocked a side entrance, waited for the guests to leave, returned and stole stero, cd player, cds. Austin police, took a report, but basicly didn’t follow up, because the crime wasn’t “significant”. Even after we tracked down the address of the person that did it. They weren’t interested in getting a warrent to search the place, and even fingerprint evidence wasn’t sufficent, since they had initially be let in the door.
This happened recently at some other friens place near the west campus area. (Two months ago).
The idea of camera’s in cell phones is interesting from a number of angles with respect to violent crimes.
I would think the credit card fraud would make the indivuals easier to track down. And as long as Danah reported the theft in the correct time period, she’s limited to a fairly small dollar value in the liability.
I would not be suprised if there are not groups/gangs that crash parties intentionally to steal.
Any Austinites reading this? Watch for those guys on 6th street. I used to live in Austin, and they look really familiar. (Especially the guy in the white hooded sweatshirt that doesn’t look too happy to be photographed.) I think I’ve been panhandled by them before on 6th street.
Not to further stir the racism quagmire, but Austin (like a lot of Texas I guess) is still very intensely (segregated/gentrified?) racially divided. Unless you’ve *lived* in Austin, you’re not qualified to judge my comments. Austin during SXSW isn’t the real Austin. You’re also not qualified if you don’t know me. If you knew me and knew Austin, you’d know where I’m coming from and would be able to turn off the PC blinders. What I have to say just plain sucks, but has truth in it.
I remember being very, very bummed out by the aggressiveness of the regular crew of panhandlers that would swarm the 6th street strip in downtown.
In the course of an evening just walking around I’d be hit up for spare change or more not only by groups of people, but oftentimes I’d be hit up by the same person(s) over and over again in the space of a few hours, sometimes minutes apart. These guys were often wearing more expensive (looking?) clothes than I was. I don’t know what they were thinking hitting up a random slacker in thrashed clothes on a skateboard. One once even asked me to give him my skateboard. (I’ll give you my skateboard, upside your damn head!) I’ve even been asked “Dude! Gimme 20 bucks! I need 20 bucks!”. *blink*
One of my first experiences with exploring 6th street was getting followed by _three_ guys down towards the commercial buildings on the far side of Congress. I’m pretty sure they thought they could roll me. (But they would have found a buck or two in my pockets at most) Anyways, after I had been followed enough to know they weren’t just on the same path as me (we’re talking for blocks, with a bunch of erratic turns and backtracking), I turned around and growled “Listen. I’m from L.A., and your making me f’ing nervous. When I get nervous in situations like this, people get hurt. GO AWAY. NOW.” and they freak out, putting their hands up and going “sorry! sorry man! we didn’t know!” like that somehow had anything to do with it, like if I had “Grew up in Los Angeles – high risk target” tatooed on my forehead they wouldn’t have targeted me. It was pretty clearly non-verbally communicated that they were intending to mug me or corner me to demand money or something along those lines. The same guys tried to panhandle from me again later the same evening on the other end of 6th street (Towards Stubb’s and the stream and stuff) and I got a little upset.
Yeah, they were black, like most of the people I saw panhandling on 6th street. You’d find the runaways and street punks and whatnot that were more often white pandhandling over on Guadalupe by UT or on the feeder roads to the I-35, but it’s like this group of black people had an exclusive contract for 6th street.
I don’t know if it’s the good old boy culture and oppression there that produces this hopelessness or what, but LA doesn’t have this problem like Austin does, at least not so aggressively and visibly. Whatever the reason, there was a very visible (but hopefully small and unrepresentative) segment of the black population in Austin that did very little to avoid propogating a whole crapload of nasty stereotypes which don’t bear repeating.
Yeah, I said that. I told you it was going to suck. But for this particular *segment* or *crew* or whatever, it’s damn true. I am in no way saying *all* black people are theives or bums, and I’m certainly not saying *all* white people are trustworthy and hardworking. Hell no.
Though LA has it’s own issues with racial division, they weren’t like what I found in Austin. Here in LA, I’ve got friends from nearly every country and continent on the planet, and of nearly every color, including some colors that only exist in the wilder boxes of Crayolas.
In Austin, it was much different, and there was always seemingly this weird _awareness_ about what color someone was, especially where the faces subcultures intersected.
Depressing, that.
Watch 6th street. Spread the word to some Austinites. Be careful. Good luck. Nail the bastards.
Damn… i see that Ryland guy every where these days. THE MAN IS A BLOG NINJA.