Rumors Can Kill

 Trying to squash a rumor is like trying to unring a bell.  ~Shana Alexander

A Florida man found dead in his home May 12, 2010. Like many murders, this one was senseless. Police know the 79-year-old Bithlo, FL man was murdered. Investigators verified his killers targeted him because they believed the elderly man was a sex offender. However the truth, officers said the elderly man WASN’T a sexual predator and the killers were wrong.

Crowd behavior in sociology refers to the situations where persons participate in small or large groups. A crowd or mob will show examples of group behavior when people come together in a set place and time act in a similar way—for example, joining a protest against a neighbor or participating in a fight.

A rumor without a leg to stand on will get around some other way. ~John Tudor

Bithlo is located in East Orange County. The victim was found inside his home in early Wednesday morning. Police were back at the home Thursday collecting evidence. Neighbors identified two who broke into the home and killed him by beating the man to death with a baseball bat. Detectives recovered a baseball bat from a nearby retention pond that they believe was used in the fatal beating. According to new reports it was a black Louisville Slugger baseball bat. Police arrested 20-year-old Robert Pascale on Thursday on a charge of first-degree murder. Pascale's friend, 32-year-old Michael Garay, charged with accessory to murder.

For a starting point, gossip started in the community that the victim was a sex offender who may have molested children. Investigators reported people in the community started fuming and discussing what they should do to him. The 79 year old man had no criminal or arrest records. Actually there was a warrant out for the suspect in the killing. Go figure!

Convergence theory states that crowd behavior is not an end result of the crowd itself, but is introduced into the crowd by particular individuals. Thus, crowds amount to a convergence of like-minded individuals. So while contagion theory states that crowds cause people to act in a certain way, convergence theory says the opposite. The theory states people who wish to act in a certain way gather to create crowds. An example of convergence theory states there is no homogeneous activity within a repeated action, often observed when an criminal population (felons) becomes common in a previously homogeneous area, and members of the existing locality (apparently impulsively) join together to terrorize those trying to move into their neighborhoods. In such cases, convergence theorists’ challenge, the crowd itself does not generate hatred or violence; to a certain extent, the hostility was simmering for some time among many local people. A crowd then arises from convergence of people who oppose the presence of these neighbors. Convergence theory claims that crowd behavior as such is not irrational; more accurately, people in crowds utter existing attitudes and morals so that the mob reaction is the rational outcome of widespread accepted feeling.

May 6, 2010, Channel 6 news Orlando reported there was a FAKE website posting addresses of “felons”. The site is called FelonSpy.com and it was meant to be a “joke”.

• Problem: the site uses REAL addresses where REAL people live. The addresses are posted on a map on the site.
• Problem: the name the site assigns to the address is a sham. The TV station reporter actually went to the addresses to verify.

The reporter also noted that concerned people on social network sites like Facebook recommended the site not realizing the website was bogus.

The Puritan's idea of hell is a place where everybody has to mind his own business. ~Wendell Phillips, attributed

A moral panic is the strength of feeling articulated in people about an issue that appears to threaten the social order. The “joke website” FelonSpy.com feeds people “moral” fears. The site uses fear mongering or scaremongering (fear) to influence the opinions and events of people towards the “felons”. People allow themselves to be manipulated fear – immigrants, skin color, race, health care, poor, homeless, death, short people, long hair......