There's No Drug Crime Wave at the Border, Just a Lot of Media Hype

By Gabriel Arana, The Nation. Posted May 29, 2009.

"People don't feel threatened at all," she said.

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."

"There, they have money, safe houses; if a member is captured, he can escape or buy his way out," Garcia said.

The report, however, wasn't picked up and disseminated by other outlets as the New York Times and AP stories were.

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.

The hype has been enabled by a news apparatus that feeds sensationalism. As Treviño said, "The media take one incident and they blow it up; it makes for good copy."

Melissa del Bosque, the journalist who originally reported on media misreprentation of US drug violence for the Texas Observer, attributed the appearance of sensationalistic stories to a number of factors, among them the agendas of what she has called "border-warrior politicians" who use neologisms like "narco-terrorism" in calling for the border to be militarized; the change in administrations; and budgeting concerns.

The formation of local, state and national budgets at the beginning of the year provides an opportunity for politicians to exaggerate the threat posed by Mexican drug cartels and thereby receive more funding for local police forces, del Bosque said. Indeed, Texas Homeland Security Director Steve McCraw stressed that the spillover had already occurred in asking state lawmakers to approve a $135 million increase in funding requested by Texas Governor Rick Perry. In Arizona, police readily admitted to the Arizona Daily Star that they welcomed more money.

The motive for exaggerating the effect of drug-related violence is not just monetary, though. "There are a lot of conservative legislators who want to look tough on border security," del Bosque said.

Even a cursory online search bears out what del Bosque surmises: conservative commentators and politicians have used the news to call for tightened border security, in some cases even calling for the border to be "militarized." For example, Fox News' Sean Hannity recently warned that "the effect on our country may be just beginning" before telling viewers to shield their children's eyes from the Mexican drug-violence footage that followed. He was not alone--as he did in the segment--in conflating US and Mexican drug-related violence.

Del Bosque and other journalists who report on and live near the border criticized the simplistic characterization of life there by the national media, one informed by "Wild West" and drug-movie caricatures. "The national media doesn't really care about the border," del Bosque said. "They hit it like a piñata and take off."

See more stories tagged with: mexico, border, drug war, southwest

Gabriel Arana is a Spring 2009 intern at The Nation, a graduate student at Cornell University and a contributor to Box Turtle Bulletin. He can be reached via his website GabrielArana.com.

Liked this story? Get top stories in your inbox each week from DrugReporter! Sign up now »