Talk of the Town
And each new post gives birth to serpentine comment
threads — fertilized with equal parts schadenfreude and
wound-salt, vicious, triumphant or combative, occasionally
concerned and sometimes even helpful — that members
spool out in response to this or that serialized tragedy of the
human condition: gunshots heard, car collisions witnessed,
criminal mischief on the run. People behaving badly.
Sometimes, those comment threads get so tangled up in
tangents of backtalk it’s hard to keep track of the original
post.
Altogether, the picaresque portrait of reality presented
by Lane County Mugshots Uncensored is at once medieval
and populist, a digital vision of our community that
combines the vigilante justice of the Wild West with a kind
of Hobbesian cyber-cynicism, giving the impression that
Eugene is gripped by a queasy chaos that makes life nasty,
brutish and coked to the gills on drugs, especially crank
and heroin.
A member post from May 5 reads, unedited:
“Eugene used to be so safe back in the day. Well a
month ago my stepfathers license plates were stolen and
last night my grandfathers car was broken into. Cops don’t
even bother with this they just send the forms in the mail.
What the hell is Eugene coming to?”
And among the several dozen comments to this post
were these:
“It’s a liberal run city. The only people getting in trouble
are the ones that can pay those hefty fines.”
“I say this every day. I cry and am so afraid to let my
kids out of my house. Every day there is more pain. What
are we gonna do? Let our beautiful city die to and evil
people?”
“When I lived there a cop informed me if someone
walked in my house I have ta let them rob me and not take
matters in my own hands to call cops and wait for them to
get therer? Kiss my what? Lao I’ll take my chances with a
jury on that one ..... crazy!”
“explain to me how everything is the liberals fault it’s
either the Mexicans or liberals you right wing nut jobs
blame”
The Wizard of Id
Whereas traditional news sources are financed by
advertising revenues and staffed by a clutch of editors and
reporters, Lane County Mugshots Uncensored is run almost
singlehandedly by one man, Mike Weber, who, along with
the help of four part-time and unpaid administrators, plays
blue-collar Wizard to this weird online Oz.
In person, Weber comes across as one of those pure
products of Eugene: affable yet cautious, whip-smart and
hard-bitten, a town-and-country boy in a baseball cap
who straddles rural and cosmopolitan in a way that leads
a lot of us, politically and socially, into a wonky form of
libertarianism. He is the Northwest equivalent of a Boston
“Southie.”
A Lane County native and graduate of Elmira High School,
Weber graduated from Lane Community College with an
automotive painting and metals degree. Before branching off
and starting Lane County Mugshots on Facebook in 2011,
he was a member of Lane County Citizens for Responsible
Government — a political activist group that fought EmX
expansion — as well as being involved in the online news
sites Lane Today and Eugene Daily News.
Although still up and running, the original Lane County
Mugshots, unlike the “uncensored” page, does not allow
members to post.
Burnt out on politics and the hard work it takes
maintaining a daily news site, Weber, now 52, says he
next started Lane County Mugshots Uncensored in 2014 as
something of a hobby, with the idea that in his spare time
he’d be administering a site that could serve as a kind of
local crime watch — a place where average citizens could
at once observe and participate in a dialogue about the
underbelly of the social politics of Eugene, Springfield and
broader Lane County.
LCMU Member Don’t know why I joined, but good sarcasm and
funny idiotic replies is why I have stayed.
Like · Reply · 3 · 2 hrs
LCMU Member Because I want to see all the bike thieves and
tweaker scum called out and publicly shamed.
Like · Reply · 3 · 2 hrs
LCMU Member I joined to see my ex husband’s mugshot. I stay to
laugh if I see him here again lol.
Like · Reply · 3 · 2 hrs
“Heroin, meth, transient central, justice system that
does not care about property crime.....that’s why it is the
way it is.”
“Scare tactics deployed ... Screw it, if everybody
started exercising their 2A right and starting killing these
criminals, it might be less appealing to commit crimes,
especially crimes of a violent nature...”
“Liberalism destroys everything and everyone it
touches.”
“My hope in putting the mugshots out originally was
that this area would see the crime, put a face to it,” he says.
“We were hoping to show the community what’s going on.
We thought it would be a good community service, but it
became obvious that it was a guilty pleasure that people
enjoyed.”
Weber also administers Lane County Mugshots: Lost
and Found, a page for “posting lost and found pets, farm
animals and items,” as well as Oregon Crime News, a
website that posts mugshots from around the state as well
as other criminal events and notices.
Weber says he doesn’t profit from any of these pages
or sites, which he typically spends his after-work hours
administering and updating. One thing he says he’s never
done and never will do, unlike many such sites around
the country, is charge people to have their mugshots
taken down — a form of online extortion that has led to
protective legislation nationwide, including in Oregon (HB
3467, which went into effect January of 2014, requires
sites to remove mugshots for free if the individual charged
is found not guilty).
“We’re just regular people,” Weber says of the small
group administering LCMU. “We’re not super-trained.
We’re trying to keep some order in the chaos so that the
group is useful to the community. We’re teetering on that
line between making sure people can speak their mind and
it doesn’t turn into some racist, homophobic thing.”
“It’s a weird fine line,” he adds. “It’s indefinable.”
Why We Come, Why We Stay
A recent survey on LCMU asked why members joined
the site and why they stay:
“I was new to the area and buying a house and wanted
to get a feel for where the crime seemed to be concentrated.
Plus I don’t watch local news or take a paper. I get 100% of
my local news online.”
“People who might not express their opinions in
public seem to have no qualms when it’s on FB. I find it
fascinating. Gets me out of the ivory tower.”
“I joined for info and stay to remind myself that no one
is as nice as I think they are.”
“I like knowing what’s going [on] around us. I feel like
I was in a very sheltered bubble before seeing everything
day to day that goes on. And I like that I get to see the good
things people do also.”
“Because I want to see all the bike thieves and tweaker
scum called out and publicly shamed.”
“I joined to see my ex husband’s mugshot. I stay to
laugh if I see him here again lol.”
“Don’t know why I joined, but good sarcasm and funny
idiotic replies is why I have stayed.”
“Morbid curiosity.”
Last time I checked, Lane County Mugshots Uncensored
had 42,000 active members; the print circulation of the
Eugene Weekly averages 40,000. Technically, these two
free “news” sources are in a neck-and-neck competition,
but whereas the Weekly consistently quotes the same
dozen or so politicians, policy wonks and so-called experts
about what they think is going on in our community, Lane
County Mugshots Uncensored lets the people speak for
themselves.
Last month, in April, LCMU received more than half a
million hits, and Weber says he’s expecting 750,000 page
views on the site in May.
The Roar of the Masses
Weber responds to the shit show that LCMU often
becomes, especially in the comment threads, with a
resolute “don’t kill the messenger.” Although he admits to
being a bit awestruck and often baffled by what the site’s
become, he nonetheless argues that its a worthwhile “news
source” providing insight into the state of reality in the area
and the way people feel about it.
As much as you might be distressed or disgusted by
what Weber calls the “working class” view provided by
LCMU, he says it would be a mistake to simply write it
off. “Those people are bringing their opinions and ideas
and attitudes so everybody can see it,” he says of the site’s
members. “What you’re getting is street-level people. I
think more affluent people do not want to comment on this
because their position in life kind of keeps them from being
vocal on any issue. They need to be politically correct.”
Weber, for his part, isn’t always encouraged by what
he sees on his own site. “It just kind of proves the way
I thought, that a lot of people are apathetic and negative
and uninformed on a lot of issues,” he says. “When I read
my group, I get the feeling that the vast majority of those
eugeneweekly.com • May 11, 2017
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