Face to Face

     Although I am definitely a "glass half-full" kind of guy, I believe there are members of society who operate somewhere in the shadows and get up each day with the intent to do wrong.  I continue to be dismayed by some of the stories we hear every day about this killing here, that disappearance there, senseless violence at that other place...  What I find even more disturbing is how much younger the perpetrators are, and how more women seem to be involved in these activities.  Maybe I'm just naive and women and youth were always involved and I just didn't see it.  I also wonder what intelligent, thoughtful people would say tops the list of contributing factors to these trends.
     Somewhere along the road to "progress", technology has accelerated faster than the average individual's capacity to keep up except for some of those very individuals I mentioned who look for more and more creative ways to do what's wrong.  It wasn't that long ago when the preferred method of communication was face-to-face interaction, where you could look someone in the eye and watch their body language and make a fair assessment of honesty and trustworthiness.  In this day of Twitter, Facebook and any of the other myriad of social networking resources, one can believe they're friends with total strangers.  In fact, one can call themselves friends of folks they will never, ever meet.  The shadowy area of this particular environment is where the predators and criminals operate, portraying themselves as honest, trustworthy people of character.
     Some of my outrage started to simmer when I found myself watching Dateline's "To Catch A Predator".  Surprisingly enough, some of the men caught on that show were repeat offenders.  Up here in the Pacific Northwest, a 22 year-old woman was just found guilty of first degree murder and other charges related to a murder she helped organize when she responded to a Craigslist ad for the sale of a diamond ring.  She and three men went to the house and terrorized a family, ultimately killing the father when he tried to protect his family.  In October 2007, a 24 year-old woman was killed after corresponding via Craigslist with who she thought was a lady looking for a regular babysitter for her 5 year-old son.  When she got to the house, she was met by a young man with a .357 who killed her.  In February 2009, a 21 year-old male was killed responding to a Craigslist ad for the sale of a Chevy Caprice.  On the news right now is a continuing story about a serial killer who's been preying on women selling themselves for sex on Craigslist for at least three years now.  What I can't wrap my brain around is that although the news stories about this are out there, women (and men) continue to meet for sex with strangers...sorry...friends.

     Since we trust what people post online, we will be more inclined to venture out to meet our "friends".  Where do we draw the line?  How do we know what's waiting for us on the other end?  We buy our children cell phones and Internet-ready gadgets before some of them can even read or write properly.  What responsibility do parents bear when their children are preyed upon via social networking sites?  What should we teach our children about these "friends"?  Were our families safer before all this technology became available?  Even though the predators and criminals were doing their thing before all this, at least you got to look them in the eye once in a while.

http://www.examiner.com/crime-in-national/official-calls-craigslist-long-island-serial-killer-an-animal
http://www.thenewstribune.com/2011/04/15/1626921/woman-guilty-in-craigslist-murder.html
http://craigscrimelist.org/