Initial reporting on social media and elsewhere about a stranger stabbing on a sidewalk in Columbia’s upscale Shandon neighborhood lacked context and inflamed an already volatile situation, Columbia police Chief Skip Holbrook said.
“I wouldn’t necessarily call it a false narrative — it was just not the complete narrative, and it wasn’t the full context,” said Holbrook in an interview. “A challenge for law enforcement today is staying ahead of the narrative because of the speed of social media.”
“People were taking positions and making statements based on not having all the facts,” said Holbrook, who has been speaking in recent days about the incident to neighborhood groups in Shandon and Heathwood…