Before discussing the drawbacks to social media, kudos to the administrators for taking the initiative of trying to set up neighbourhood watches. These groups below started off with the best of intentions but the nature of social media allowed for them to balloon into administratively labour-intensive groups.

An example from a Canadian NW (Aug 10, 2018) on Facebook:

24 posts in one day! 318 posts in one month! Being a member of this NW would be very time consuming. Are all 4,500 members really neighbours? Not likely. They may live in the same city, that is all. With an increase of over 1,100 members in the last 30 days, the quantity posts will likely only get worse.

The first post is legitimate, reporting something meaningful. The 4 posts that follow offer no useful information and do not contribute to the crime reported in the first post. This is what can happen with social media, it somehow causes people to just talk and express opinions.

Neighbourhood watch was about knowing your neighbours and reporting something out of place. With thousands of members how can anyone really know anyone else?

Neighbourhood Watch is also about communication with your neighbours and with the police regarding crimes in your neighbourhood. Imagine if you were an officer that was a liaison to several watches and they all posted similar volumes to the one below. How much reading would an officer have to do possibly everday just to find the meaningful posts? Posts should really just be about the facts and leave the opinions for face-to-face conversations with your neighbours.

An example from another NW (Aug 15, 2018) on Facebook:

The first post is legitimate, reporting an assault along with the suspect vehicle. The 89 posts that follow, except for a couple, offer no useful information and do not contribute to the crime reported in the first post.

An example from Neighbourhood Protect:

As a comparison from Neighbourhood Protect, one resident posted an image of a perpetrator stealing from vehicles and one other neighbour posted a helpful photo of a second perpetrator doing the same thing. Just the facts and nothing more. This is something that the police can easily find and use in their investigation.

Before the internet, NW was pen-and-paper and had meetings to get updates on crimes. There was no reporting of emotions, just the facts of the crime(s). Social media today has allowed people to write opinions which clutters the crime posts and becomes a physical burden for the administrators of those groups because they have to review each post and delete any inappropriate ones otherwise their group could be banned from social media.

The above posting from April 6 is from a social media administrator and the frustration they are having keeping up with the volume of posts and the opinions being posted.

On Aug 19 the Administrator is still experiencing the same frustrations as shown above in his third post on the subject.

The reason for the frustration, their group has grown to over 5,200 members (655 joined in just 10 days) with 15 posts by 7:30 am. This group is slowly going from being a NW to a city-wide chat group.

Social media is a good anchor to let a lot of people in a community know about the intentions of starting some neighbourhood watches. However, manageable groups need to then be set up for each physical neighbourhood. Neighbourhood Watches need to get back to the basics of actually being neighbhours and just reporting crimes and nothing else.