Arc Tangent

Watch­ing 60 Min­utes is a mis­take, some­times. Other times, it man­ages to make me think. Of late, it’s almost always sen­sa­tion­al­ist tripe.

Tonight’s major story was what I would call a fluffy PR piece on the Riot Squad up in Syd­ney. Their job — at least accord­ing to 60 Min­utes — is to ‘keep the streets safe’ from ‘increas­ing street vio­lence’ by employ­ing ‘aggres­sive tac­ti­cal behav­iours’. My first prob­lem with the 60 Min­utes piece is the claim of increased street vio­lence with­out some sort of backup.

ARE RATES OF VIOLENT STREET CRIME IN NSW INCREASING?

Accord­ing to the NSW Bureau of Crime Sta­tis­tics and Research’s NSW Recorded Crime Sta­tis­tics Annual Report 2008, rates of vio­lent crime exclud­ing rob­bery reported in NSW have increased from 70 inci­dents per 100,000 pop­u­la­tion around 1994 to around 140 inci­dents per 100,000 pop­u­la­tion in 2008 (with peaks around Jan­u­ary, doubt­less the New Years Eve period). These do not include rates of rob­bery, which change the pic­ture a bit — and do include domes­tic vio­lence, so it’s not clear how much of this is ‘street crime’.

A related doc­u­ment at the same site, ‘An update of long-​term trends in prop­erty and vio­lent crime in New South Wales: 1990–2008′, shows that rates of mur­der have decreased while rates of assault have increased; again the report does not dif­fer­en­ti­ate between on– and off-​street crime. The report does clar­ify that the rate of assaults has remained sta­tis­ti­cally sta­ble since 2000.

How­ever, the issue is not sim­ple. In 1994, the NSW Police Force’s Com­put­erised Oper­a­tional Polic­ing Sys­tem (COPS) was intro­duced. Rates of reported crime rapidly increase after this point, and we might assume that the increase in reported crime is due to the reduc­tion in paper­work and enhanced ease of report­ing of inci­dents. I won’t state this as fact — I lack suf­fi­cient data to sup­port this asser­tion — but some of the graphs in the Update of Long-​Term Trends in Prop­erty and Vio­lent Crime in NSW 1990–2008 report are specif­i­cally marked with the date that COPS was intro­duced. I don’t think it’s a big stretch.

So — are rates of vio­lent crime in Syd­ney increas­ing, 60 Min­utes? Based on my hour of research, I’m going to argue that you need to back that one up with some hard data, as the reports I’m look­ing at do not sup­port that claim.

This smacks of media sen­sa­tion­al­ism to me. 60 Min­utes seemed to take great efforts to ensure that we under­stood that rates of crime are increas­ing, and that the streets are dan­ger­ous, every night sees epic brawls and fights — they had footage of the Riot Squad walk­ing aroudn Hyde Park which they described as ‘armaged­don’; indi­vid­u­als seen in the footage were, for the most part, sim­ply walk­ing away from the area. I sus­pect that it was footage of the end of a live music event, and that it was prob­a­bly a long way from ‘armageddon’.

Bal­anced and fair report­ing, plz.

PERSONAL REACTION

The seg­ment engen­dered cer­tain feel­ings in me which I can only describe as ‘being oppressed’ — amus­ing, given that I’ve never been involved in a street fight and haven’t thrown a punch since year 10. The impli­ca­tion through­out was that the Riot Police were entirely jus­ti­fied in using strong-​arm tac­tics to sub­due street vio­lence; the nar­ra­tor went so far as to describe them as ‘Sydney’s stormtroop­ers’. I’m not sure that term implies what you think it implies, Mr 60 Minutes.

At one point, one of the female offi­cers was shown talk­ing to a per­son on the street (from the tone, one could assume the per­son being spo­ken to was in a bit of trou­ble). Two other males stood behind her, and were obvi­ously giv­ing her lip. Clearly, this is a stu­pid thing to do to a police offi­cer. Instantly, one of the male offi­cers charged for­ward and barelled the two men over and ordered them to leave the area.

Whoah. Wait a minute there. A police offi­cer assaulted two appar­ent idiots just for mouthing off? That seems like an exces­sive response. Phys­i­cal use of force can have very dan­ger­ous con­se­quences. I’ve known peo­ple who have died from some­thing as sim­ple as falling over and hit­ting their head. Are we sure we want police using phys­i­cal force to deter peo­ple and get them to move along?

Admit­tedly, the seg­ment I’m talk­ing about — like much of the footage — was taken out of con­text. Maybe those two had been involved in an inci­dent and the police were act­ing on the sus­pi­cion that these two idiots were about to get vio­lent. The two idiots clearly should not have been address­ing a police offi­cer in any­thing but polite terms (it’s just com­mon sense). On the flip side, maybe they were just ask­ing the guy the offi­cer was talk­ing to if he was okay? We never really get to see. The story is never as sim­ple and clear-​cut as the media would like us to believe.

At one point, one of the offi­cers shouts at the cam­era­man to ‘turn that cam­era off now’. Obvi­ously, I know very lit­tle of the sit­u­a­tion they were fac­ing at the time, but ask­ing a mem­ber of the media to turn off a cam­era wor­ries me. Are there sit­u­a­tions where a cam­era should be turned off when police are inter­act­ing with the pub­lic, in a pub­lic loca­tion? Was the offi­cer pro­tect­ing an under­age offender’s iden­tity by hav­ing the cam­era turned off? Or was the cam­era turned off to shield the police from pros­e­cu­tion while they were rough­ing some­one up? I don’t know, but this tiny lit­tle grab of footage was prob­a­bly the most wor­ry­ing for me — espe­cially as the cam­era­man instantly complied.

Report­ing of neg­a­tive reac­tions to the Riot Squad was weak; a sin­gle man protest­ing that they are inflam­ma­tory and cause as much vio­lent crime as they solve. I won’t say that he was right — he could very well have been noth­ing but a blowhard — but why was there only one voice on this issue? Where was the exam­i­na­tion of the impact of the Riot Squad on vio­lent crime in inner city Sydney?

I found the tone of the whole seg­ment deeply trou­bling. The con­stant impli­ca­tion that any­one out drink­ing might be a trou­ble­maker. The focus on youth, as if no-​one else binge drinks or gets vio­lent — set­ting ‘young adults’ up as straw-​man vil­lains. Few hard ques­tions were asked about the Riot Squad’s strong-​arm tac­tics, which to me implied a tacit under­stand­ing that law enforce­ment should be able to do what­ever is nec­es­sary to stop crime — that the police are always the good guys, and always beyond reproach.

The truth is so much more com­plex. I don’t doubt that the Riot Squad do good work and are prob­a­bly nowhere near as unthink­ing as the 60 Min­utes seg­ment made them out to be, but the over­all tone of the seg­ment wor­ries me. At every turn, we’re being told that things are get­ting worse, that harder mea­sures need to be taken. Laws are tight­ened and clamped and we’re all told we should feel a lit­tle bit safer with every piece of leg­is­la­tion that gets passed.

I don’t feel safer. Quite the oppo­site. And jour­nal­ists not ask­ing hard ques­tions wor­ries me.

(But what am I expect­ing from 60 Minutes!?)