The lies fueling tough-on-crime hysteria would make Trump blush

Why do media carry water for "tough-on-crime" lawmakers who shamelessly bend the truth?

Crime-loving progressive DA Chesa Boudin

Remember how during the Dark Ages of Trump our heroic media shined the Torch of Truth onto the former president’s distortions and falsehoods? Headlines like “Donald Trump, Falsely, Claims … “ abounded.

Well, Trump himself might blush at the way tough-on-crime types are stretching the truth, aided by media that excel at fueling social panics.

On Friday, the office of New York Mayor Eric Adams posted a statement decrying the pre-trial release of a 16-year-old who allegedly wounded an off-duty officer in the leg as the officer tried to disarm the teen. In the scuffle, the teen also managed to shoot himself in the groin.

“Today of all days, with the city in mourning over the deaths of Detective First-Grade Jason Rivera and Police Officer Wilbert Mora, we all must come together and agree that changes are needed,” Adams said in the statement about two officers who were slain last week after a domestic violence call. Adams’ statement suggests the teen had been released because of bail reform, and claimed that he was “walking free” because judges are barred from considering dangerousness.

But the court set bail at $200,000 cash or a $250,000 insurance bond. He was released when his cousin paid $17,500 for bond. The judge had the power to remand him, but chose not to.

In other words, his pre-trial release had nothing to do with bail reform. Also, he is 16. Adams’ language suggests he’s a dangerous criminal who poses an extreme threat to public safety. It suggests that he targeted and tried to execute the officer: a wannabe cop killer. The tone has “super-predator” vibes, not “teen dumbass who almost shot his own penis off.”

You might know all that if you were familiar with the case, or if, unlike almost everyone, you had the attention span to read the whole story by the New York Times. Because were you to skim the headline and first few paragraphs, you’d come away with the conclusion that a mass murderer had been unleashed on the streets of New York City by judge Chesa Boudin.

Headline: “Adams Blame Bail Law After Release of Teen Charged in Officer Shooting.” If it were 2015, I’d forgive it because of the Times’ need to maintain objectivity or whatever. Just the facts, etc. But the Times, the Washington Post, and other major mainstream publications framed stories about Trump in a way that made it blisteringly clear when the former president was full of shit on a daily basis. There is nothing subjective about the fact that Adams is wrong to blame bail reform for the release of the teenager.

As public defender David Menschel noted, “The headline of this article is absolute journalistic malpractice and this reporter knows it. The New York Times has become an absolute disaster in its coverage of crime — laundering lies, willfully misleading its readers, seeking to foment hysteria.”

Stories that distort facts and individual cases to promote a tough-on-crime narrative are being pumped out at a dizzying rate. The New York Times also gave criminal justice experts mini-strokes with the German Lopez story, “Examining the Spike in Murders.” In it, Lopez floats three possible causes for the rise in homicides: the pandemic, increases in gun ownership, and “the fallout from the 2020 racial justice protests and riots could have contributed to the murder spike.” He swiftly dispatches with the pandemic as the cause, noting that homicides didn’t surge immediately after lockdowns and that other countries didn’t see a similar jump in fatalities. OK, but, other countries don’t have nearly as many guns, which makes it much harder for people to kill each other in response to the trauma, boredom, and societal breakdown caused by the pandemic. As far as timing goes: complex interrelated social phenomenon don’t follow stopwatch strict time. It makes sense that violence would escalate after a few months of everyone slowly going insane, rather than during the first lockdowns when most of us thought they’d last a few weeks. FAIR ripped apart the rest of Lopez’s story, tracing how Lopez bends the truth to reach the conclusion that more police are the answer in “NYT Twists Stats to Insist We Need More Policing”

Another foregone conclusion, if we’re to go by mainstream media narratives as well as poorly vetted propaganda, is that progressive DA Chesa Boudin really loves crime and chaos.

If you were to read these stories about an assault of an elderly Asian man, you’d think Boudin callously failed to seek justice in a brutal hate crime. And you might be like, “Hmm maybe there’s something to this, ‘Has reform gone too far?’ thing.”

The initial reaction to the story knocked Boudin for being insensitive to attacks on Asian people. “I applaud the bravery of Mr. Le in the face of two injustices: the first by his attacker and the second by the SF DA's office. It's time Chesa Boudin's treatment of the AAPI community is called to account, but don't take my word for it, take Mr. Le's,” read one typical response. Le and his lawyers claimed that Boudin’s office gave the perpetrator a lenient year of probation without consulting Le, and failed to bring hate crime charges against him.

But the lawyer John Hamasaki broke down how media coverage misrepresented the case. First, it was Boudin’s predecessor that prosecuted the encounter. Second, Le was hit with a plastic toy bat by an 11-year-old after Le yelled at the kid for riding his bike on the sidewalk. As for the dangerous perpetrator left to roam free by (not) Chesa Boudin—he was the boy’s father, and he was in a wheelchair, and it’s not clear if he expressed anti-Asian sentiment or merely barked at a stranger for yelling at his kid. Still, he got a year of probation.

The San Francisco Chronicle belatedly updated their headline about the story to specify the bat was plastic. “Man beaten with a plastic bat in S.F.’s Chinatown sues D.A. Boudin’s office, claiming his rights as a victim were violated.” The initial headline just said “bat,” which makes you think of a wooden or metal bat. The new headline still nevertheless suggests the fault lies with Boudin.

Le and his supporters and lawyers initially claimed the DA’s office failed to consult him before reaching the plea deal, but call logs revealed they’d reached out to him multiple times, to no avail. The new headline does not make clear that the man’s rights as a victim hadn’t been violated in the way he’d claimed.

I don’t know why mainstream news sources keep carrying water for tough-on-crime lawmakers and falling for propaganda against progressive DAs. It takes roughly 4 minutes to Google Boudin’s actual record on crime, which is better than that of conservative DAs in California. Or to research the horrid history of the plainclothes police unit whose comeback Adams has made the virtual centerpiece of his administration. Or to figure out that everyone rushes to blame bail reform cases where where it’s literally irrelevant.

If anyone has any idea about why this is happening, beyond “If it bleeds it leads” or access to prominent lawmakers like Adams, I’d love to hear the theories.