Angry Teens Confront Stunned HP Driver
We can only describe this confrontation last week between a motorist and pedestrians in Highland Park as unfortunate for all involved. You can draw your own conclusions.
At 4:04 p.m. on July 21, a group of teenagers kicked and punched the passenger side of a black 2009 Audi sedan in the 5400 block of Hillcrest Avenue as it waited for a light to turn on to Mockingbird Lane.
Officers with the Highland Park Department of Public Safety stopped the vandals near the intersection of Hillcrest and Beverly Drive, where they were met by a counselor for Creative Solutions, a nonprofit group that helps at-risk teens and was operating a summer arts camp at SMU.
The 8-10 campers, who are all black, were walking to catch a bus after the camp when they claimed a driver yelled racial slurs and spat at them. Police said they retaliated by attacking the Audi, perhaps by accident. None of the kids admitted to damaging the car, and camp counselors took them home. The damage to the Audi included smudge marks and a small dent.
It’s important to note that this incident shouldn’t in diminish the reputation of Creative Solutions, an organization co-sponsored by the Dallas County Juvenile Department with an excellent 20-year track record of helping troubled teens stay off the streets and improve their behavior. We’ve reached out to officials there for comment, and will update this post if we hear back.
In fact, Creative Solutions will wrap up its summer program this week with a stage performance and gallery opening at SMU that’s free and open to the public. You can get more information here.
This is more of a meta-comment rather than a comment on the subject of this post, so apologies in advance for going off-topic.
I’m sad to see that this site has pretty much become a dead zone in terms of reader engagement and response. Two or three years ago, this post would have attracted 50 comments by now. Some thoughtful, some stupid and maybe even a few racist ones that the editors would have had to delete. But now it’s just nothing. It’s like you guys are talking to an empty room.
These days I don’t visit this site more than once every month or so, if even that. There was a time I would refresh this page two or three times a day to see what had popped up in the feed, and I commented a lot. Like everyone else, I commented because the postings drew a reaction out of me. More often than not, the stories that got my attention were the periodic reposts of some crazy mom’s email blast warning her neighbors about a shady looking guy in a van or sitting on a park bench, or the latest whooping cough outbreak, which inevitably triggered a vaccine vs. anti-vax debate. Sometimes it was other stuff, such as the ESD trial or that deranged Patton Boggs lawyer who mounted an online jihad against Drip Coffee (remember that?).
Most of my comments were poor attempts at humor or just plain dumb. But at least I was paying attention and I’m guessing many others did as well.
You don’t need to become BuzzFeed, just recalibrate a little and try to be interesting again. Do that and the audience will come back, myself included.
Neal,
Thank you for your comment. We appreciate that you care, because we care too, a lot. In the past few years, we’ve undergone a lot of changes on our blog. We’ve started posting stories from our print issues and pushing content more heavily on social media, where our reach can sometimes be more expansive than it is here. While it may seem the conversation has stopped, it has simply migrated to our other social platforms. This is a trend with other publications besides ours.
We love any kind of interaction with our readers, be it positive or negative, on the blog or on Facebook. We seem to be doing something right, because our site visits are up and the conversation on social is active.
Please consider tuning in more often. We’ve got a lot of quality content on here, not just rumors and scandals (though if you know any, please send us an email…).
Affectionately,
Your PeopleNewspapers team
Then is there a way to merge the comments from the different forms of social media so we can see them here? For those of us not inclined to tweet or FB it would be great to read people’s comments on articles in one place.
At this time, Facebook is currently working on a Comment Mirroring application that will bridge the interaction gap between the blog and our Facebook Page. Unfortunately, this plugin is closed beta only, so we won’t be able to implement it until it is released to developers. Rest assured, we will update our comment system as soon as it is available.
Well said NealK. It’s unfortunate that I see from the below answer that they seem to be more than happy with turning the PCP blog into a ghost town where the most recent comments are usually from weeks ago as long as twitter and facebook follower numbers are up.
Hate is taught or learned…doesn’t matter race, religion or sex. Place an Asian, Black, Mexican, and Caucasian toddler together on a playground and they will play together like no bodies business. Teaching hate in my opinion is Child Abuse. Anyhow, enough of that. I take my hat off to groups like Creative Solutions who is trying to make a positive difference in the lives of local troubled teens. They have the patience of Job and the caring of Sister Teresa.