Racist FOX News, other media push crime stories to counter Black Lives Matter

All this Summer FOX News has led almost every broadcast with lurid crime stories. Just yesterday someone shooting out the back window of their own car in an argument became the lead story on FOX, complete with white tourists saying they felt safer with so many cops in that part of town. This drumbeat has been in most of the major media, but FOX especially ever since the Battle of Baltimore was fought over the murder of Freddie Grey by police. There is the real possiblity that this is an organized effort to rebuild support for police on the part of media outlets owned by the wealthy whites whom police protect.

It turns out that the "massive spike in crime" is only a 20% difference. Keep in mind that murder is one of the least common of all crimes and remains so today. That means it takes very few incidents to create a double-diget increase in the murder rate. In the first three months of this year, published statistics showed robberies and assaults were up only 8.7%, meaning you were almost exactly as likely to have to defend yourself from a robbery attempt last year as this year.

Earlier in the year some media outlets even gave airtime to police officials blaming the "Ferguson effect" for crime. This was a direct repudiation of the Black Lives Matter message, a direct appeal to the public to support jump-outs, "stop and frisk" and other forms of racially-biased policing. New York City did not have a sudden increase in crime in December when the shooting of two cops led to a de facto end to Stop and Frisk and a near stoppage of harassment arrests and tickets. Even Fox News was not talking of a crime increase in New York, even while a police department demoralized by the execution of two of their own in the street went nearly on an unoffical strike. As the NYPD focussed on attacking New York's Mayor, criminals there essentially ignored any opportunity provided.

An August 3 Washington Post story on crime in Baltimore featured one Sandtown resident claiming cops were nowhere to be found, yet the reporter who wrote the story personally witnessed another resident being illegally stopped and searched while trying to get a cab to pick up his 3 year old daughter. In other words, crime and racist policing both essentially going on as before, with any changes being only in degree. In addition, police are shooting and killing people at essentially the same rate as before. While cops now experience the reality of a surveillance society themselves for the first time, the most aggressive cops, the ones who commit nearly all of the officer-involved shootings, are the least deterred. In a neighborhood in DC I am, personally familiar with, police harassment of African-American youth has actually increased since the Ferguson protests began. In other words, we can dismiss the "Ferguson Effect" as a driver of crime-it is a myth.

Others have blamed synthetic marijuana-at a time when real marijuana is being legalized in many places, DC included. This argument is interesting, as one factor blamed for the popularity of these drugs is the fact that employer and court ordered drug testing cannot detect them. Meanwhile courts and employers continue to punish and harass people who test positive for maurijuana, even where it is legallized. Perhaps the spread of the synthetics is a direct and forseeable consequence of the routine violation of people's civil rights and bodily integrity by piss-testing?

There is also the timing aspect: Why would sythetic "pot" suddenly become massively popular and widely distributed just as real pot is being legalized? Perhaps history is a guide to this question. For centuries white invaders poisoned Native American communities with alcohol. Full blooded Native people and many mixed Native people do not produce the enzyme necessary to digest alcohol, rendering it a dangerous poison. It was known variously as "crazy water," "firewater" and similar terms and was condemned for always flowing freely when there were treaties to be negotiated or battles to be fought. No matter which end of the pipe tomahawk was called for, crazy water could douse it.

More recently there was the epidemic of crack cocaine and the "crack wars" during which DC had over 600 murders a year. Any crime spike today is small by comparison. After the crack came wholesale gentrification and evictions. Still later came an epidemic of crystal meth (smokeable methamphetamine) in the Gay clubs-just before former Mayor Williams proposed to demolish an entire Gay neighborhood to build a baseballl stadium. Similar gentrifcation of traditional Gay community spaces occurred elsewhere during the same era, also accompanied by crystal meth.

Given this long history in the US of drugs that conveniently appear when there is land to be stolen or uppity people to be suppressed, it is a strange cooincidence that there would suddenly be a flood of news stories about "synthetic pot" accompanied by many times more crime stories in the news than the actual crime increase would justify. By watching FOX you would think the Crack Wars were on again and crime many times its current level, and if you drink the Kool-aid you are soon calling for empowering jump-out squads to go after synthetic pot, searching everyone on the block to find the one kid with a packet in his pocket.

Whether or not the "synthetic pot" is an introduced problem, if it occupies the same market niche as real pot, expanding pot legalization to people who live in public housing or otherwise cannot afford to buy a home of their own would reduce the market. So would removing pot from the battery of drug tests used by DC Superior Court and prohibiting any employer in DC from testing for cannabis in a non safety related position. Doing both would probably destroy the market for synthetic wannabe pot althgether.

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2015/06/17/3670203/ferguson-effect-isnt...