More on "Kidnappings R Us"
The Arizona Republic reports this a.m. that kidnappings were down in the city last year—slightly:
Phoenix police anticipated a drop in kidnapping reports in 2009 compared with the previous year, though with 302 filed through November, the numbers haven’t decreased significantly.
2008’s total of 359 earned Phoenix the nickname “kidnapping capital” of the U.S.
The story, irritatingly, doesn’t answer or drops a couple of tangential issues readers would like to know the answers to.
One, the LA Times last year reported on the Phoenix kidnapping problem—basically one a day—and finished it with this disturbing sentence: “Police estimate twice that number go unreported.”
That would be about a thousand of these incidents occurring each year. That’s a mind-blowing figure when you consider that they are all taking place in a limited part of the valley. They aren’t happening at the Biltmore; that means that life in the less-swanky parts of town is correspondingly dangerous.
Two, the story doesn’t discuss the kidnapping rates in the rest of the valley or in Maricopa County as a whole. As I read it, it carefully makes clear the figures are for the city only. There’s no reason to think the kidnappings stop at the city’s edge. Based on crude population figures, we could expect at least double that number are occur in the county as a whole.
And here’s the depressing prognosis:
Phoenix Home Invasion and Kidnapping Enforcement investigators say they have dismantled dozens of small gangs involved in kidnappings and home invasions, which led to a small drop in the overall numbers.
“Dozens” of gangs dismantled … and the rate has gone down less than 20 percent.
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Kidnappings R Us!
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.
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A kidnapped man is released
(Updated below)
A short story in the Republic says:
Miguel Romo, 59, left his home to run errands and pick up items for his daughter’s birthday party around 4:30 p.m. Saturday, Phoenix police Lt. Lauri Burgett said.
Several hours later his family was called by the kidnappers. They demanded money for his safe return, Burgett said.
The paper doesn’t say if they paid the ransom. Sigh. The reporters quote a police spokesperson but then write:
It was not clear if anyone had been arrested in the case.
Why couldn’t they just ask the spokesperson? Couldn’t he simply say yes or no?
I cite this story not just because of, again, the routinely poor editing at the Arizona Republic, but because of a meme circulating to the effect that Phoenix now has the second-highest kidnapping rate in the world after Mexico City. The statistic was apparently cited on a National Geographic Channel’s report on the drug war last night.
Folks tweeted the line, and I poked around to find a citation for it; it’s possible that this has been in the Republic a lot and I just haven’t noticed it. It has appeared in speeches by John McCain, so I assume it has a basis in fact.
The cites say that the city now has an average of nearly one kidnapping per day.
Update: Le Templar writes:
I believe the notion that Phoenix is the kidnapping capital of the U.S. began with this story from ABC News on Feb. 11.
The story appears to rely on official 2008 crime statistics from various cities around the world, but the exact sources aren’t clear.
A similar story appeared on the L.A. Times web site on the very next day as part of its extensive series on Mexican drug violence, citing unnamed local and federal sources.
Hope this helps!
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