Social Media Responses to Saturday Assaults, Arrests

The Village law enforcement personnel will use and monitor social media to address future large gatherings of young adults, according to a

Specifically, the measures that focus on communication include:

* Using grass roots communications, as well as social media, to widely promote the Village’s commitment to maintaining the quality of life in the CBD;

* Re-instituting and ramping up monitoring of social media for monitoring the potential planning of such “events”;

* Establishing a social media “tip-line” for Villagers to report to the SOPD any indicators they identify regarding such activities.

In addition, two public meetings, including one tonight at 7:30 at Village Hall, have been scheduled to discuss resident and merchant safety concerns. 

 It is believed that the teens and young adults may have been Earlier Saturday, messages such as “over 200+ people going to South Orange Ville,” were tweeted and retweeted.

Other messages included, “mad people going there tonight,” and “people just going, like valentines day weekend. but its gonna get shut down.” Other tweets suggested that there would be “wilding” in South Orange, which is known as “South Orange Ville,” “The Vill” and “The Ville.”

Two New Jersey-based Facebook users posted an “event” called “South Orange CHILL AT THE VILLE,” scheduled for Feb. 12, from 6:30 p.m. onwards. One of the posters has 1429 “friends,” while the other has 1224 friends.

Likewise, conversations on twitter, all local to South Orange, react to the Saturday events by asking and recalling who went and what happened.  Please note that some messages have been edited with brackets to omit profanity or epithets. 

“all I see on fb was "the ville was live" wat is there to do?”

"this ville [garbage] is out , [people] frighten , ppl running ,cops everywhere -_-"

 Drove past the ville and there was mad people lol ewww"

"The Ville wasn't made for [people] to hang out all them … people in one place lead to fights, and then ppl get mad when they start macing"

"Hidin inda bathroom cuz [people] tryna kick us out the ville lol"

At Monday’s board of trustees meeting, trustee Deborah Davis Ford urged law enforcement to “build a strategy” based on the new reality of social media. Davis paraphrased a number of tweets that she found online.  She further noted that the speed of online communication and the ability of an individual to reach large groups of people almost instantly has changed communication.

Locally, Saturday’s events have led to lively discussion on MaplewoodOnline, and to Facebook postings from a group called The Ville. That group invites people to South Orange for a “doggie parade, starting at sundown, weather permitting Friday & Saturday night.”