More U.S.-Mexico border crime a myth, officials say

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Des Moines Register

More U.S.-Mexico border crime a myth, officials say
By LEE ROOD • [e-mail] • September 12, 2010

If you lived hundreds of miles away and listened only to the sound bites leading to passage of Senate Bill 1070, it would be easy to imagine some parts of Arizona as every bit as lawless as fabled Tombstone, circa 1881.

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer sounded alarms this spring with talk of mayhem and "headless bodies" found by local law enforcement in the desert. In U.S. Sen. John McCain's successful bid for re-election, he described the violence as "the worst I have ever seen."

Leaders have cited the perception of out-of-control violence spilling into the United States to justify the need for many things this year - from SB 1070, to President Barack Obama's decision in May to send 1,200 troops to the border, to Congress' decision in August to spend another $600 million on border enforcement.

Authorities say Arizona's sparsely populated border is home to the most drug seizures in the country and more arrests of border crossers than any other state. But crime along the entire border is now as low as it has been in years, police and U.S. Customs officials say.

"You are not going to be a victim of violent crime here," said Jeffrey Kirkham, police chief in Nogales, Ariz. "We haven't had murder here in five to eight years."





Read more: http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20100912/NEWS/9120339/1001/NEWS/More-U.S.-Mexico-border-crime-a-myth-officials-say

[pinboy3niner]

1. We don't need no stinking facts!

We've got Brewer, McCain and others telling us what a dangerous place their state is. (I thought they were against the boycott, but they seem to be doing more than anyone to destroy Arizona tourism. Who the hell would want to visit Arizona, with all those headless bodies all over the place?!!!)

Meh, why would I pay attention to what cops who are actually ON THE BORDER say, when I have such prominent people spinning me tales of violence and danger? They couldn't have any ulterior motive for making this shit up, could they?

[pampango]

2. Don't let facts get in the way of a good ol' scary "'They' are coming to get 'us'" repub campaign.

"Us vs. Them" is a standard repub tactic that they reuse time and again. It is great for distracting people from the real source of the inequalities in our society (the repubs themselves) and getting them to focus on the "others" that is out there trying to take what little stuff we have left.

It just requires a little tweaking each time to fit the chosen "them" (gays, Blacks, socialists, abortion doctors, bureaucrats, immigrants, Muslims, etc.). Repubs have learned that repeating a scary story enough times makes it "true", regardless of the facts.

[timo]

3. Texas does

we had a really great set of murders uncovered here last week, player a delivered the dope to gang hq, came back later and tried to rob the hq, gang sends player b to kill player a, he does, gang kills player b so he wont snitch on the deal and buries him in the backyard covering him in multiple layers of concrete...the whole ball of wax gets handed to the cops by player c who is picked up on unrelated drug charges!!! the rio grande valley, deep south Texas, the 956....bucking the no crime stats since practically forever!!

[UTUSN]

4. K&R #8 (for the o.p.). So by your post, the grand total is TWO(2). n/t

[Igel]

6. It's hard to read the press sometimes.

For sparse areas, you get small number statistics.

Quick, which is worse: one murder out of a population of 50 or 50 murders out of a population of 5000? The one is trivial, but a 2% homicide rate; the latter 50 are worse, but only 1%

When there's uneven coverage, you also get bad generalizations. I mean, I'd hate to live in Springfield, Illinois; the crime rate in Chicago is so high, and they're both in Illinois. Or to say there's no crime in Houston because crime in the River Oaks section is so low, what with the police, house alarms, and private security guards. The first assertion is wrong because it misattributes the location of crime; the second because it misattributes the location of crime suppression. (Not that River Oaks is likely to have a big murder rate.)

So Nogales is one of the big epicenters of Border Patrol and police activity; it's the location of probably the strongest border "protection". People who get across the border there illegally are going to scram; people who cross the border elsewhere aren't going there. Move to areas with significantly thinner border security and you'll find sparser populations. Then the first place the illegal border crossings will interact with locals is fairly far from the border, so crime there isn't "border crime."

I don't know if this supports either side or neither. The one side cites information from Nogales, data on crime rates from Phoenix and instances of crime from elsewhere (i.e., cite rates when the population is high and the number of incidents high; cite incidents when the number of incidents are low and the population is low); the other side cites anecdotes because it's more politically expedient to describe a single crime than it is to cite dry stats. ("We" do the same when looking at, say, incidence of hate crimes against illegal immigrants; the incidence is low, so instead we're feted with gory stories of individual occurrences.)

[pinboy3niner]

5. Kick