Searching for the Border Violence Story

by Dave Bennion · 2009-05-30 21:25:00 UTC
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In light of a frenzy of reporting this year on drug violence spilling over from Mexico into the U.S., Gabriel Arana of the Nation looked at the numbers and found a different story.

While there has been an increase reported in drug-related kidnappings in Phoenix, overall violent crime there has actually decreased.

According to the police department, the number of violent crimes in the Phoenix area is also down: there were 11,194 violent crimes in 2006, 11,168 in 2007 and 10,466 in 2008. The number of robberies in 2006 was 4,363, spiked to 4,924 in 2007, then decreased again to 4,835 in 2008.

Outside of Phoenix, border cities from Texas to California have not seen the crime wave that CNN and Fox News have been reporting in recent months.

While the drug-related crime wave is a well-known fact in Nogales, Sonora, the American side has not seen a single murder this year; there were also none last year.

. . .

Amid the symphony of national news media proclaiming an outbreak of violence over the past few months is one report from NPR's Deborah Tedford that challenged what had become conventional wisdom. On May 15, she reported that the string of cities along the border between Texas and Mexico--El Paso, Laredo, McAllen and Brownsville--had seen no increase in drug-related crime. Brownsville Police Chief Carlos Garcia told Tedford that while some residents of the city worked for drug cartels, they conduct this business in Mexico, where "extensive networks...keep them safe if they are caught."

. . .

Looking at crime statistics for San Diego, Atlanta and other major drug transit cities casts similar doubt on drug violence reports. In San Diego, across the border from Tijuana, the rate of violent crime per 1,000 people has decreased slightly over the past few years, from 4.87 in 2006 to 4.5 in 2008. For the first two months of this year, the rate continued its slide, to 3.85. The same is true of robberies, the rate of which fell from 1.5 in 2008 to 1.19 through February. In Atlanta, there was one more homicide in January compared to last year and the number of robberies decreased from 288 in 2008 to 266 in the first month of 2009.

It looks like the reporting on the "border violence spillover" story raced ahead of the facts.

Via Latina Lista.

[Image: pearlbear on Flikr]

Dave Bennion
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