A piece of evidence from a relatively high-profile local crime was found very close to my home. (No worries, I have no reason to believe my neighbourhood is any less safe than I thought it was.) It isn't too hard to figure out which recent news story I'm talking about, but I'm not naming names or identifying features for googleability reasons.
I've been following the media coverage closely and have been reading the associated comments threads, and one thing I discovered to my surprise was how much of the general public's speculation is just wrong because they lack what I will term hyper-local knowledge. By hyper-local knowledge, I mean familiarity with the usual behavioural patterns and motivations of people in this neighbourhood. Not in terms of normal human motivation, but rather smaller and fussier things, like where people would take a shortcut or a smoke break or walk a dog, which entrance people would use if approaching a certain building from a certain direction on foot, stuff like that.
It sounds so inconsequential, but I'm reading through the comments threads dismissing theories left and right with near-certainty. "No, a visitor to the neighbourhood would never use this street to get to that destination." "Actually, people leave their personal effects there all the time and it hardly warrants a second glance." "Yes, it isn't far, but they simply wouldn't come here unless they had a very specific reason. People just don't do that." "The only way a person with a car would end up there is if they were very familiar with the area and had been in that exact location for a specific reason previously."
I never would have thought this if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, but there are so many little nuances that you just don't perceive until you've spent a lot of time in a particular context. Half the time I can't even articulate why, but I'm absolutely certain that no one would ever to that thing one of the commentators is proposing. It's not like these commentators are stupid or ignorant or anything, they just don't know that people tend to run their dogs in this bit here, and sometimes they block off that sidewalk for construction, and the subsequent ripple effect in overall neighbourhood behaviour until you get to "Well, of COURSE he moved it! I would have moved it too! It's the obvious reaction!"
This makes me wonder how many thoughts and ideas I have that are just completely wrong because of some tiny little nuance that I can't even see.
(Fortunately, based on what I've seen in media coverage, the police do seem to have this hyper-local knowledge.)
No comments:
Post a Comment