The false outrage about the New York Times article

[FUCK THE POLICE]

You may have noticed messages like this going around the internet:

I noticed the headlines on the right bar and clicked on the one titled:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080113/...s_after_combat

Quote:
AP
Report: 121 veterans linked to killings
After reading a bit, I thought, this sounds weird, it's seems the only purpose is to label the returning vets as, 'killers.'

Just didn't sound right. Yet I'm not interested enough to find the stats and then have someone disagree if they didn't work out. Luckily someone else did:

http://www.windsofchange.net/archive...s_it_again.php

Quote:
From the October 1, 2001 start of the Afghanistan war, that's about 26,000 troops/month. To date (Jan 2008) that would give about 1.99 million.

That means that the NY Times 121 murders represent about a 7.08/100,000 rate.

Now the numbers on deployed troops are probably high - fewer troops from 2001 - 2003; I'd love a better number if someone has it.

But for initial purposes, let's call the rate 10/100,000, about 40% higher than the calculated one.

Now, how does that compare with the population as a whole?

Turning to the DoJ statistics, we see that the US offender rate for homicide in the 18 - 24 yo range is 26.5/100,000.For 25 - 34, it's 13.5/100,000.

See the problem?

Damn, is it that hard for reporters and their editors to provide a little bit of context so we can make sense of the anecdotes? It's not in Part 1 of the article. And I'll bet it won't be in the future articles, either.

Because it's not part of the narrative of how our soldiers are either depraved or damaged.

The NY Times Public Editor can be reached at public@nytimes.com.

The problem here is that they are comparing the homicide rate for the general population, to the murder rate for returned soldiers. Murders are much rarer than general homicides. Homicide is a blanket term for the killing of one person by another. Manslaughters, negligent homicides... etc... would be included in that statistic. Murder is the most heinous of these offenses, defined specifically as a homicide with malice and intent.

The MURDER rate of the general US population is 4 per 100,000.

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_mur_percap-crime-murders-per-capita

The soldiers coming home have a MURDER rate of 7.1 per 100,000, as shown in the above article. So, returning soldiers have a murder rate twice as high as the general population. And as they said, the 7 per 100,000 rate is probably low. God only knows the homicide rate - I could imagine quite a few vets being let off easy with a manslaughter conviction where murder would've been appropriate for most people.

 

[FUCK THE POLICE]

Hey, SM, did you get this?