Walter Katz, a 17-year public defender, former police oversight official and deputy chief of staff for public safety for former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, spoke to journalists about crime trends in his role as vice president of criminal justice at Arnold Ventures. [Transcript | Video]
5 takeaways:
➀ The reasons behind the homicide spike in 2020 remain unknown. Current explanations reflect biases, not facts. “One thing I’ll not tell you is why there was a rapid increase in violent crime, but we do know that homicides increased from 2019 to 2020 by about 29%, the largest year-over-year increase that had ever occurred in the history of data collection on homicides,” Katz said. There are many competing, unproven hypotheses, and the explanations that are being offered are being chosen based on bias, Katz warned.
In 2019, violent crime continued a long-term trend of deep decrease. The pandemic brought a confluence of “black swan” events (things deemed so unlikely as to be impossible.) There was a decrease in property crime like burglary and car theft – presumably because people and their cars were home – and a record increase in violence and gun sales.
And while Americans were at home, they witnessed on television the “obvious moral failure” of George Floyd’s killing by police, Katz noted. Both the “defund the police” movement and the demoralization of police have been blamed for the rise in violence.
“When one looks at the crime data, one says, ‘I see this giant spike in 2020. That must have happened because of’ – OK, well now you can have some options here.
“Option number one, is it because police officers felt the society didn’t have their back anymore, so they stopped doing police work?
“Is it because of the crash in legitimacy, and people are no longer respecting the law, and so taking law into their own hands?
“Is it because police officers engage in a cynical work slowdown and stop doing police work to teach everyone a lesson?” Katz asked. “I’m not giving you any of those answers. I don’t know.”
The problem for journalists, Katz noted, is “when we look at the latter half of 2020 into 2021, everyone had an answer. And in my view, most answers are already based on the biases of the person who is trying to provide the answer for you.”
➁ Crime trends are difficult even for experts to tease out. Katz recommended Pat Sharkey’s “Uneasy Peace” for journalists who want to understand the origins and realities of crime. He also praised the reporting on police budget increases by ABC-owned television stations and recommended that journalists scrutinize the links between explanations of crime trends and police advocacy for larger budgets. The reporting showed that with few exceptions, the defund the police movement has not succeeded in prompting cuts to police budgets.
“Only eight agencies cut police funds by more than 2% while 91 agencies increase law enforcement funding by at least 2%,” Katz noted. “That’s an example of that vitally important context that has to be provided when we as a society are having these conversations about what makes communities safe, and what are the factors that help drive unrest and help drive disorder and violent crime.”
➂ But the urgency of television news coverage too often results in loss of context. “For news stations where you have competitors, you have commercial challenges, you have time pressure, you don’t have a lot of time to put out a story, and often you don’t have time to follow up in a story,” Katz said. “Unfortunately, the cost is that there’s a ton of context in criminal justice which is getting lost, in my opinion, as a result of that need for urgency.”
➃ Journalists should focus on clearance rates, not just crime rates. The clearance rate is the percentage of cases that police solve, usually by an arrest, and a metric of police performance that news organizations should be examined carefully, Katz recommended. The national clearance rate for homicides is about 60%, but there is huge variation, he said, noting that Chicago’s clearance rate is about 30%.
“The reality is that only about 45% of all type one crimes – that means robbery, assaults, theft, homicides, sexual assault – are reported to the police. Only about 45%, and of those, homicide has a high clearance rate of about 60%. When we talk about shootings, for example, aggravated assaults, in some jurisdictions, they fall down into the single-digit percentages” for clearances, Katz said.
He called on journalists to ask police more regularly, “How many cases are you actually solving?”
“The impulse is to do the story of what happened that night at the tape when someone got hurt or killed. There is not a lot of follow-through. But I don’t think that city council members or mayors or legislators or the media or the public is asking at all enough questions about, ‘How is money being spent, and how are you solving these crimes that occur?’”
➄ Be mindful of the effect of news coverage on victims. In a recent study of gun violence victims in Philadelphia, victims reported feeling negative or conflicted about media coverage of their cases.
“These are people who have been victimized by gun violence. Often, they’re victimized again by negligent or non-caring policing. And then, they’re victimized again in news coverage … and they’re victimized again when they go through the court system. Victims of violent crime deserve better.”
Crime Coverage Summit 2023: Beyond ‘If It Bleeds, It Leads’ was sponsored by Arnold Ventures and hosted by NPF and RTDNA. NPF is solely responsible for this content.
