Monday, April 02, 2007

(Partial) Defense of Menino

Mayor Menino is somewhat correct in his reaction to the past few days' media focus on the city's violence. This news cycle seems to kick in about every five months or so, lasts a week or so, and bears little correlation to what's actually happening on the streets. Menino is also correct that nobody pays much attention to the city's black neighborhoods except to bemoan the violence, which we claim is intolerable but then forget about. What's truly remarkable is the overwhelming number of people, especially young men, in those neighborhoods who are basically well-behaved and law-abiding: overall crime continues to drop, even though the number of "at-risk" residents of those tightly-packed neighborhoods has ballooned in the past five years.

And there are some promising early signs of scattered law-enforcement success. But Menino is off his rocker to claim, as he always does, that the city's streets are under control. The truth is, that small percentage of thugs are winning -- it's not even a close contest. And those few thousand thugs are a major quality-of-life issue for the 200,000 or so who live in the 13 square miles of Roxbury, Dorchester, and Mattapan.

Those thugs are bolder and meaner than ever, and all the shooting they've been doing over the last three years has made them better at it: the fatality rate for shooting victims has leapt from around 14% to 20% this year.

So, while shootings are down, homicides are up, especially among teens and young adults. I give you -- and Mayor Menino -- these stats I've thrown together to show you what's going on.

Homicide victims by firearm, age 25 and under, Boston.
Year         -3/31         Total
2007         13
2006         6               38
2005         6               30
2004         4               32
2003         4               14
2002         6             20
2001         1               25
2000         4               14
1999         0               11
1998         3               16

4/2/2007 10:03:05 AM by David S. Bernstein | Comments [6] |
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Monday, April 02, 2007 10:41:54 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)

Can you clarify these statistics? Do you mean that in, for example, 2006, out of 38 homicide victims in Boston, 6 were under the age of 25? And how does that statistic relate to your point that the number of shootings is down overall but among those shootings, the number of fatalities is up? Do you have any numbers for a third column in your table that give the number of shootings as well? I have to wonder also at the number of permanently disabled people these shootings are creating in addition to the number of deceased? If I were the mayor, I'd have volunteers on every corner of every street if necessary. A city that isn't safe isn't doing well, or it won't be for long. I wonder how these numbers compare to neighboring Cambridge? And I wonder how the colleges and universities are handling these problems? I would think they would have the greatest interest in preventing violence. Or do they simply say to the students, "Don't go into that neighborhood"? I hope not. That would be such an elitist disgusting thing for them to do instead of rallying to solve these problems. They wouldn't live in fear like that. They would demand security from the city or state. Please keep giving people the facts on this quickly changing situation. Facts are hard to come by on the violence. And it's an issue of great importance to the entire state, even to me on Cape Cod.

mjn

Tuesday, April 03, 2007 9:07:09 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)

Wait...So, the news cycle is totally unrelated to what's going on in the street. But at the same time, the current spate of violence-related stories in the Globe/Herald corresponds with a _doubling_ of the shooting-homicide rate from 2006 to 2007? That just a coincidence?

Surely there's some capriciousness to the way things are covered--e.g., Chiara Levin vs., say, Jonathan Jacques--but it seems to me overly paranoid to say that the dailies are just out there making shit up. (Deliberately?)

There is just no connection with reality in Menino blaming reporters for the city's problems. It's a low, weaselly move. Reminds me of a letter to the editor I read once in the Globe, which stated with zero irony that the MCAS was actually killing young black people. Yeah. That's the problem.

It's a damned shame dailies don't do better at covering Dor/Mat/Rox, and the Globe really ought to have residency requirements just like the cops do. But you're giving Menino the benefit of the doubt for having some kind of incisive critique of the news cycle, when all he's doing is making the rounds telling tired lawyer jokes about a profession everybody loves to hate.

Harris

Wednesday, April 04, 2007 9:03:23 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)

He's not too hard to figure Menino out. After all, he is a politician, and a very "good" one at that. He will recognize there's a "crisis" when it is politically expedient for him to do so.

Example: "We're in the midst of a crisis here, and it's the fault of our neighboring state's and their lax gun laws. We need to spread Massachusetts-style gun control laws across new England."

Likewise, he will emphatically deny there's a crisis when (surprise, surprise) it's politcally expedient to do so.

"There's no crisis. It's the media's fault for making things look worse that they really are. Everything's fine. I've got it all under control."

Bruce

Wednesday, April 04, 2007 9:03:59 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)

Make that "It's not too hard...".

Proofreading is your friend.

Bruce

Wednesday, April 04, 2007 9:52:56 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)

For clarification: the second column, headed "-3/31", is the number of victims age 25 and under through March 31st of that year. The third column, headed "Total," is the number of victims age 25 and under for that full year.

And responding to Harris: What I'm saying is that this sort of media flurry has happened periodically for many years -- I have clips going back to at least 2000 -- and the timing of those flurries does not correlate to real trends on the ground, in my opinion. Perhaps it does in this case, perhaps not. Overall shootings and assaults are not suddenly up from the last couple years' norm, for instance.

David S. Bernstein

Wednesday, April 04, 2007 2:18:25 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)

Fair enough. Media coverage comes and goes. But anyway, what constitutes a "real trend on the ground" would take hardcore statistics training and at least a few months' worth of hindsight to figure out-- neither of which reporters tend to have on deadline.

Main point: I think it's bogus to stand up for Menino's fake-populist potshots at them. Whacking the dailies for specific sins of omission would be fair game. But crying about media spin, when clearly something is rotten in the state of Denmark, is a trick he could have learned from Karl Rove.

Not to, you know, haul out the atom bomb of cheap ad hominem attacks or anything.

Harris

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