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Here’s how media can present facts but not truth: Published reports center on the arrests of four alleged carjackers in Paterson. But what’s behind the story?
Rather than regurgitate, let’s examine the “facts” as presented….
1. Paterson police arrested four men and charged them with robbing and carjacking two men who were sitting in a car on a Paterson street;
2. The two victims were attacked around midnight;
3. One is 21 and the other 19;
4. Both are from Pompton Lakes;
5. They were robbed of $2,000 in cash.
Pompton Lakes is a suburb of Paterson that has far nicer — and pricier homes — decent schools and a lot less crime.
Rather than pursue the backgrounds of said muggers — who were found carrying crack and heroin — I’d be more interested in our victims.
Who, by the way, the media identified.
During 28 years of covering crime and courts for print, I rarely, if ever, listed the victims’ names — more out of sensitivity than anything.
But in this case, since they were identified, why not try to find out more about them?
What were they in the middle of the night in a dangerous neighborhood, driving a Honda? What brought them there? Some type of business? Friendships? And what were they doing with all that dough?
Perhaps they made a wrong turn looking for a shortcut home, then stopped to gather their bearings.
For several months, a pair of intelligent, street-smart reporters spent time in Paterson, under my guidance, trying to determine which way the drug traffic flowed.
They also cleverly reviewed arrest records, compiling a list of those busted, their ages, and their hometowns.
The conclusions were inescapable: The largest industry in Paterson is in illegal drugs. And the money is coming in from the outside — mostly from leafy suburbs in Bergen and Passaic but sometimes from further away.
Even buyers from Manhattan thought enough of Paterson’s brand of heroin to cross Hudson for it.
So which end of the supply and demand chain do you feel like pursuing? If you sweep a corner, the paperwork at headquarters isn’t even finished before a new group has set up shop.
But if you make it a well-known practice of busting buyers and asking questions of others who happen to be parked in or cruising a neighborhood, perhaps a different reputation will develop.
Do we truly want to solve this problem, or do we want this type of shooting-fish-in-a-barrel crime fighting?
Talk to me….
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