If a blonde Paradise Valley High schooler were to be kidnapped, chances are almost certain it would be pretty big news, and 6-5 or better that it would be really big news. You can imagine the hedlines:

“Search for Megan continues.” “A Vigil for Megan.” “Megan’s parents wait stoically for a call that still hasn’t come.” “The Megan They Knew.”

Earlier this week, I questioned whether a widely noted statistic—that Phoenix has become, after Mexico City, the kidnapping capital of the world—was true. In this ABC news report, for example, the assertion isn’t sourced, nor is the rate of kidnappings, 370 last year.

Le Templar of the East Valley Tribune sent along this LA Times report, which uses a case study of one kidnapping investigation.

A serious reporter, Sam Quinones, explains the numbers. Kidnappings in Phoenix as well as the rest of the country were traditionally rare. In Phoenix that’s changed, because of the border drug wars:

One result is an epidemic of kidnapping that many residents are barely aware of. Indeed, most every other crime here is down. But police received 366 kidnapping-for-ransom reports last year, and 359 in 2007. Police estimate twice that number go unreported.

That last line, if true, is notable; that means there could be three drug-related kidnappings a day in the Valley.

(For the record, I still think the figures are sketchy; Phoenix police figures are always cited, with no mention that the city is only a third of the area’s population, and no mention of the county sheriff’s office, which you think would be handling a lot of the cases as well.)

In any case, this is all rarely touched upon in the Republic or the local TV stations. I don’t mean they don’t talk about the issue in general terms, but the effect on the family is the same if it’s a high-schooler named Megan or a guy named Luis. But of course, it’s very infrequent that we see anything about these crimes—the lame Republic story on a kidnapping I noted this week is an exception—much less anything like “A Vigil for Luis.”

Not surprisingly, the New Times’ Ray Stern has looked at this and gone a little deeper. We know the media doesn’t care about these crimes. Turns out the FBI doesn’t either:

Let’s say John White, a U.S. citizen, gets thrown into a van by masked kidnappers, and his wife — who sees the crime — calls Phoenix police. Imagine that no one ever sees White again. Which federal agency, FBI or ICE, do you think would be more likely to help local police investigate that crime? The FBI, right? Bingo.

Now imagine the same scenario, except the guy has four names of a Spanish origin and his wife is an illegal immigrant from Mexico. In that case, apparently, the understanding among law officers is that ICE would get a call instead of the FBI.

Anyway, you can watch local TV news with its fixation on tawdry offenses and car accidents and come away thinking it’s barely safe to go outside. But of course Phoenix, like most big cities, has benefited from a major drop in crime, and the coverage is mostly scare-mongering. (The older people in town—Fox News watchers to a man—I know are obsessed with crime.)

Yet here’s something that really does have an extraordinary effect on the Valley’s population. (Some percentage of these guys have families here, as do the perpetrators, and the cost of investigations, prosecutions and incarcerations isn’t incidental.) It could be that there are assaults or home invasions resulting in kidnapping for ransom three times a day in town—and we barely hear about the victims or their families.