[Scan-DC] Nashua woman's Facebook crime page takes off

[Alan Henney]

My Facebook page is so boring.  How about the rest of you?

The Telegraph (Nashua, New Hampshire)

September 1, 2013 Sunday

Nashua woman's Facebook crime page takes off

BYLINE: JOSEPH G. COTE; Staff Writer

SECTION: NEWS

LENGTH: 584 words

NASHUA - Meg Doucette grew up with the squawk and squelch of a scanner.

It was on full time when she was growing up.

Her father worked downtown and had a CB radio in his shop. He would hop on in the afternoon and announce when he was coming home for lunch. Her mother would hear it on the scanner.

Later, she and her ex-husband would listen to the emergency scanner instead of watching TV. 

"It's just something I've always done," Doucette said. "We always, always, growing up, had a scanner in our house."

Doucette got used to it when friends, who knew how much she listened to the chatter among police officers and firefighters, asked what was happening on this street or that. But she didn't think a simple Facebook page would balloon to thousands of followers.

Doucette launched Southern New Hampshire Emergency Alerts on Facebook in May, mostly for her friends. They shared the page with their friends, but Doucette figured she'd top out at no more than 1,000 followers or so.

But by the end of August, more than 6,200 had "liked" the page and commented voraciously on posts Doucette shares on everything from fires and car accidents to armed robberies, domestic disturbances and weather emergency alerts.

"The only way you get all this is to actually sit down and listen," Doucette said. "People need to understand what I'm writing is just what I hear broadcasting across the scanner. ... I want people to know what's going on."

The page is so successful that Doucette has expanded. Instead of covering only Nashua, she has taken on a handful of assistants who help administer the page.

Nine people, including Doucette, are listening to scanner frequencies in Nashua, Amherst and Manchester. She hopes to broaden the scope of the page to cover the state's three southernmost counties - Hillsborough, Cheshire and Rockingham.

But posting every nitty-gritty detail broadcast on emergency channels isn't always cut and dry - see the multitude of conflicting bits of information broadcast by news agencies during coverage of the Boston Marathon bombings.

While the information officers relay about, say, an armed robbery suspect's description is real, it might not be accurate. Information relayed to police, particularly from multiple sources and in real time, changes quickly. It can be easy to mishear some transmissions or miss others entirely.

That's one concern Police Chief John Seusing said he had with pages such as Doucette's.

"My initial concern is that people could post things that are inaccurate and then people feed on that," Seusing said. "But people have a right to say what they want to say, and I'm perfectly fine with that. I would just be concerned that there could be some alarms set off that don't need to be set off."

There is a certain amount of alarm created by the Facebook page. Numerous people have commented on the number of crimes being committed in Nashua or said they feel unsafe.

Doucette said she's as clear as she can be that she's simply a relay between scanner and Internet.

"The only thing I keep telling them is nobody knew about this stuff before," she said. "This stuff was always happening; it just wasn't on social media. But I also have to use my discretion posting things, too. I think people want to know sooner than later that there's some cretin in their neighborhood. I do think that over the summer, more of Nashua was much more aware of their surroundings."

Joseph G. Cote can be reached at 594-6415 or jcote at nashuatelegraph.com Also, follow Cote on Twitter (@Telegraph_JoeC).