The Thin Blue Lies Behind Crime Wave Hype

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Josmar Trujillo
@Josmar_Trujillo
Wrote about the cartoonishly bad copaganda raging in local and national media about violent crime for @FAIRmediawatch:

The Thin Blue Lies Behind Crime Wave Hype
Right-leaning media have used the uptick in certain crime categories to argue we need more cops and law enforcement to save our cities.
fair.org
5:42 PM · Jun 24, 2021

https://fair.org/home/the-thin-blue-lies-behind-crime-wave-hype/

The stories were horrible.

A woman tied up and fatally shot in her own apartment. Her neighbor was killed in his apartment two days later in the same way. In another tragic episode, a young teenager was killed in a horrendous machete attack in the Bronx that made national headlines. The New York Post (7/30/18) reported on a violent stretch of seven hours where 16 people were shot, one fatally, in 10 separate incidents: “Gunfire Explodes Over Seven Bloody Hours in NYC.”

There were almost 300 reported murders in New York City that year, almost one per day. There were over 20,000 reported felony assaults, about 55 per day, and more than 12,000 robberies, 35 on an average day. The year was 2018, and it was the safest year in New York City’s recorded history. In a city of over eight million residents, crime, even in the safest times, will always be a headline.

Fast forward to 2021 as the city, and nation, begin to climb out of a pandemic that saw mass economic and social fallout—to say nothing of the lives lost. A historic, once-in-a-lifetime worldwide event destabilized the lives of countless people, and also led to an undeniable rise in shootings and homicide across the country. However, right-leaning media have used the uptick in certain crime categories to weaponize a counter-narrative to social justice movements, one that argues we need more cops and law enforcement to save our cities.

‘Fear City’

The narrative isn’t a new one, and it certainly doesn’t seem to be a genuine one. Local conservative tabloids, like the Post and the New York Daily News, have for years tried to stir fear of a city overrun by crime (FAIR.org, 6/21/21). As we’ve pointed out at FAIR (6/28/18), the local tabloids were apocalyptic in their predictions for the city when stop and frisk, a dragnet policing tactic, was ruled unconstitutional in its application by the NYPD. These papers have supported controversial police tactics like “broken windows”—a crackdown on minor offenses in poor communities, no matter the costs on vulnerable populations. (“Broken Windows ‘Works,’ and if It Hurts Immigrants—‘Too Bad,'” was how FAIR summarized the Daily News‘ position—3/8/17.)

*snip*