Production Memo: Crime in the village of Hempstead

After weeks of preparation, nagging for interviews, and traveling to new places the project is finally done. There is tweaking here and there needed to be done but for all intensive purposes the light at the end of the tunnel has finally been reached. The topic for my project was crime in the village of Hempstead. The area has been known as a high crime and high drug area for years and my goal was to investigate this further. I spoke to both the Mayor of Hempstead and the Chief of the Hempstead Police Department, Joe Wing. They agreed that while the numbers are still high the crime has been steadily decreasing for the better part of the last decade. The biggest problem areas continue to be drugs and theft.
I was surprised to learn that crime has been dropping lately but not surprised that drugs and theft are the biggest problems. Another fact that puzzled me was that the police department only cleared about 33% of the total offenses committed in 2007. In an attempt to verify all of these numbers, I called the Detective who gave me the crime reports on five separate occasions as well as emailing him but I received no response. One of my colleagues, Rich Forestano, who I collaborated with during this project was able to schedule an appointment to interview the Nassau County District Attorney however upon arriving at her office she quickly stepped out saying she had something important to attend to leaving us with frustration and no footage to show for our trouble.
For future students doing this project my biggest advice would be to start early. As much as I was able to get done I wish I had started it earlier. There are a lot of technical parts to this project and you need to stay on top of what you are doing. Becoming familiar with the movie maker editing program will also be a huge benefit for this class. Usually, teachers tend to teach Hofstra journalism students the Avid program and not the movie maker but I found movie maker to be a much easier program to work with. Overall, the project is a great way to use cutting edge journalism equipment to share our posts with more than the 15 or so other kids in the classroom. Now we can show the world our work.