"The border is safer now than it's ever been"
That’s U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokesman Lloyd Easterling, quoted in an extensive AP investigation into crime at the bordor.
The upshot:
MEXICO CITY — It’s one of the safest parts of America, and it’s getting safer.
It’s the U.S.-Mexico border, and even as politicians say more federal troops are needed to fight rising violence, government data obtained by The Associated Press show it actually isn’t so dangerous after all.
The top four big cities in America with the lowest rates of violent crime are all in border states: San Diego, Phoenix, El Paso and Austin, according to a new FBI report. And an in-house Customs and Border Protection report shows that Border Patrol agents face far less danger than street cops in most U.S. cities.
The story has lots of stuff like this:
Even residents of the border region who want more security are surprised by the talk of violence.
“I have to say, a lot of this is way overblown,” said Gary Brasher of Tuboc, Arizona, who is president of the Coalition for a Safe and Secure Border.
Jan Brewer makes a knuckle-headed cameo, too:
In Arizona, a stringent new immigration law takes effect next month, requiring police to question suspects' immigration status if officers believe they’re in the country illegally. Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer said in a televised interview last weekend: “We are out here on the battlefield getting the impact of all this illegal immigration, and all the crime that comes with it.”
There’s one big flaw in the story: No mention of the supposed 300-plus kidnappings a year alleged to occur in Phoenix alone.
Previously in PHXated:
About all that immigrant-fueled crime…
Phoenix murders drop by nearly half in two years
9:04 PM
About all that immigrant-fueled crime ...
Latest FBI figures, 2008 and 2009 crime:
Bottom line: Overall violent crime in Phoenix dropped more than 15 percent—and that’s 15 percent lower than the already low rates prevailing last year.
For example, in 2003 Phoenix had 247 murders. Two years ago, it had 167, and last year had 122.
And note that those are hard numbers, not murder rates, meaning that the numbers are going down even in the face of steady population growth, not to mention all those crime-crazed immigrants.
(Fortunately, however, the bureau’s stats don’t includes kidnappings …)
9:31 AM
More random Kidnappings R Us news
It’s apparently true that Phoenix endures about a kidnapping a day, though as I have written before it’s not clear how reliable the figures are; whether they apply just to Phoenix or include the rest of Maricopa County; how many others go unreported; and so on.
It sees that the kidnappings are almost exclusively related to drug trafficking in town, and by extension to Hispanics, creating a hidden class of victims that almost never get referenced in the papers.
It seems random when the crimes do get covered. There’s a story about one in today’s Republic, a five-graf affair with practically no information, not even the victim’s name. Isn’t there a kidnapping like this every day in the Valley? Why is this one getting ink? Would the story be treated this way if the victims were Paradise Valley residents?
Phoenix Police have arrested two men who they say held a 26-year-old man ransom for two days.
Police said the victim was apparently kidnapped by men he knew on Wednesday. The kidnappers immediately began calling the victim’s girlfriend demanding money for his return, said Luis Samudio, a Phoenix police spokesman.
He said the men gave the girl directions how to wire money to their account in Mexico.
After two days of calls, the girlfriend arranged for the victim to be returned with the help of detectives. Investigators on Friday arrested two men, ages 29 and 43.
Police did not say how the men knew each other. Information on the victim’s condition and how he was released was unavailable.
7:50 AM
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.
7:00 AM
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.
7:00 AM
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!
7:00 AM