10 arrests as teens use social media to mob downtown Baltimore

BALTIMORE - It was a wild scene Saturday night; large groups of teenagers running through city streets, nearly taking over downtown Baltimore.

     

Police say one juvenile was stabbed, ten arrested.

 

"Ten individuals were arrested for charges ranging from disorderly conduct to assault to curfew violations and it did require an extra presence of police officers to be pulled in from other parts of the city," said Baltimore Police Spokesperson Anthony Guglielmi.

 

Police say there were several groups from different parts of the city, one neighborhood versus the other, all converging on downtown; disrupting the city and getting into what detectives called petty fights.

 

But Baltimore Police are realizing it wasn't exactly random this weekend but may have been planned on social media.

 

Twitter, Facebook; the social tools of a generation used this weekend to orchestrate what amounted to a menacing nuisance.

 

"We believe this movement started on social media and we're really tapping that hard today looking at what we may have missed and seeing it, what we could do going forward," said Guglielmi.

 

Including working more closely with city schools police and better monitoring social media for intelligence on such planned disruptions.

     

A technique the mayor says is being used in other city's and soon more so here in Baltimore.

 

"You'd be surprised about how really stupid people are in giving out information about...not just things like this, but information about crimes so we have to be smart.  If they're going to be stupid then we have to get smart and use it to our advantage," said Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake.

 

A lesson learned from this weekend's near flash mob the mayor says will help the city be more prepared so there isn't a next time.

 

So far, Baltimore Police say juvenile crime is up ten percent from this same time last year.