In a riveting article from USA Today, reporter Jefferson Graham describes how a resident of Manhattan Beach, California, Peter Pham, used critical alerting and community engagement tools, including Nixle and NextDoor, to mobilize local citizens to support their neighbor following an alleged hate crime. Find out more below:

EXCERPT

Manhattan Beach is an upscale community of 35,000 people, where the median price of a home is nearly $2 million. With a population that’s 82% white and less than 1% African-American, according to the Chamber of Commerce, the city traditionally votes Democratic, recently elected a black mayor and is a place many black sports pros call home.

Beyond the odd home robbery, big crime rarely happens here.

Then last week, a fire erupted Thursday at 2:15 a.m, at the home of an African-American family, the Clintons. (Police say it’s a hate crime, and the FBI is investigating.)

Nixle, a service Pham subscribes to, pushed the police report in an e-mail, mentioning a local fire. “The cause of the fire is suspicious in nature, but motive has yet to be determined,” said the report.

Pham knows his way around tech. He’s the co-founder of Science, a tech incubator that helps tech start-ups get off the ground, and has a healthy 21,000 followers on Twitter.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE