- Cape Rolling Out Bloomfield Road Art Trail (8/21/19)1
- Donors Pledge Almost Two Grand To Replace SEMO's Possibly Sentient ‘Gum Tree' (8/16/18)
- SEMO and The Will To (Become A Consultant) – Part 2 (6/14/18)
- SEMO and The Will To Do (You Really Want To See That Legal Notice?) – Part 1 (6/4/18)
- Judge, Jury... Trashman (6/1/18)
- Diary of Cape Girardeau Road Deconstruction (5/11/18)
- Trying To Save A Tree From City “Improvements” (4/30/18)2
News Of Neighborhood Thefts Getting Personal
News is often very personal and geocentric.
For instance, if a bus drives off a cliff in India and 50 people are killed, I would think to myself it was a very sad event and then not give it a second thought.
It's not that I don't care, but the world is a very big place and I have no personal connection to India. I'm not Indian, I don't know any Indians, I've never been to India and really the only link I have to that country are a handful of times that I've had to call computer tech support that happened to be located there.
But if the same bus drives off the Bill Emerson Bridge here in Cape Girardeau and plunges into the murk of the Mississippi, I would want to know every detail about the accident and the lives that were lost.
And it is a forgone conclusion that media outlets from around the country would converge here to cover the tragedy and share the minutiae of the moment with all of their readers, viewers and listeners. American's like stories about other American's, no matter how sad.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, The Times of India might note the story with a paragraph deep in the back of that day's A-section. Yes, the bus crash in the heartland of America was news and it was tragic, but it wasn't pertinent or personal to that media outlet's readership.
But to those who live in this area, it would be personal because you may have known one of those people on that bus and you would have likely used that same bridge at some point. That's what makes it relevant.
Unfortunately, news organizations can't identify what is important to every reader or viewer or listener that they serve all the time.
They have to pick and choose from their daily arsenal of "news" and hope they pick wisely. The system is not perfect. It is impossible for all news to be relevant to everyone. That might explain the proliferation of niche media -- from the I-Hate-All-Things-Obama to the I-Hate-All-Media-That-Hate-Obama. A lot of people like to watch/read/listen to news that already conforms to their own opinion or mirrors their own specific interests.
One of my interests is crime.
But for the most part, I'm only interested in crime that occurs within about a 4-block radius of my house. If it happens outside of that area, it might as well be India. But when crime occurs within that 4-block radius, I am acutely interested for the purely selfish reason that I could be the next victim.
So that's why I was keenly interested when the police caught four boys -- 14 to 16 years old -- trying to break into a house just a couple blocks away from my home last week.
Regular readers of the newspaper police report might have noticed an increase in thefts and burglaries over the past couple months in the south side of town where I live.
Few details are rarely provided in the police report, usually just a street address and possibly a general description of what was taken. A neighbor who lives a couple doors away even had his Ipod stolen out of his car one night a week or two ago.
Apparently, these punks were responsible for at least some of this crime spree since it was reported in the paper that the police recovered "stolen property from several locations" following the apprehension of these hooligans.
To me, this story was NEWS and my personal choice for Most Important Local News Story of the Month. As far as I was concerned, it should have made the front page of the newspaper with a 200-point headline screaming "THIEVING BASTARDS CAUGHT!"
Too harsh? Ok, how about "ALLEGED THIEVING BASTARDS CAUGHT!"
But rather than grace the front page with a headline that practically bellowed itself off the newsprint, the brief story was relegated to a modest spot midway down page four of last Friday's Southeast Missourian.
Most people probably weren't even aware that a crime spree was even going on in my neighborhood. There were no stories about a statistically relevant increase in thefts and burglaries. Perhaps, if you had been robbed the police officer taking your information may have mentioned the fact.
Even though I work for the paper and read it daily, I hadn't made the connection to this increase in neighborhood crime. However, my in-laws who live in my neighborhood had.
They subscribe to the paper and read it cover to cover. I even suspect they plot out the addresses of any badness that shows up in the police report on a giant wall map of the city and likely drew the correlation that a criminal enterprise was afoot long before the police even realized it.
But that is beside the point. I'm just glad the cops caught these boys, even though they are juveniles and will likely get a slap on the wrist.
Situations like this, does make one wonder about the legal status of "juvenile" versus "adult." Shouldn't you know that taking something that is not yours is wrong by the time you've reached the ripe old age of 8 or 9?
You should certainly know it by the time you are 14, 15 or 16.
I would love the judge to make an example out of these wayward boys. Throw the book at them. Make them think about the people whose homes or vehicles they broke into and whose possessions they stole and whose lives they disrupted.
Sadly I know it won't happen. Our legal system tends to coddle minors on the foolish notion that they don't know any better. I feel that is bull. These kids knew better. I imagine those thieving bastards only regret is that they weren't sneakier.
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