Democracy In Albany

Most neighborhoods in Brooklyn have at least one blog — and in some places, there seems to be one in every house, every bedroom — but not many read like BayRidgeTalk.com, where the subjects over the last year or two veered away from apartment sales and plumbing tips and block parties and sounded more like rat-a-tat police reports.

“Fighting and drug deals going down in the driveway of this house,” one person wrote in 2006 about a home steeped in reports of suspicious activity on 93rd Street in Bay Ridge.

Another person replied: “I’ve heard loud fighting for almost a year now but did not realize until recently that it’s a crack house.”

A third, who sounded more like a cynical cop than what he really is, a pet store owner, weighed in: “There have been two deaths in a one-block radius up here. One was definitely an overdose and the other is suspect, but the toxicology is still pending (to my knowledge). If the tox comes back positive, then that could indicate that some bad stuff has hit the streets.”

Months later, the bloggers are celebrating, days after the police raided the two neighboring homes in question, 346 and 348 93rd Street, between Third and Fourth Avenues, and arrested five people, including three brothers who lived there.