Monday, August 7, 2023
Thunderstorms. High 76 degrees.
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Rag Times
By Carol Tannenhauser
“I was reading the Rag the other day while I was getting my nails done,” a friend said on the phone last Friday. “I was wondering, do you have to report on all those crimes? I know they happen, but they’re not representative of the neighborhood. They give the wrong impression.”
Granted, it had been a particularly bad stretch toward the end of July. We’d reported on three sexual assaults in Riverside Park in one week; two women sucker punched in the face in three days; three women robbed by two bandits on a single scooter (one of them was also punched in the face); and a dead man in the river. Three of the alleged assailants were quickly arrested, and we covered that as well.
“We do have to report them,” I answered my friend. “We’re a news site. Crime is news — and it’s a public safety issue. It sends a message to our readers to be careful.”
Even as I said it, I knew that no matter how careful someone is, a sucker punch — by definition, “unprovoked and unexpected” — cannot be easily avoided. In Australia, it’s called a “coward punch” (which is interesting because, that way, it places the onus on the puncher.) I didn’t want to think about the sexual assaults.
“Plus,” I added. “The police ask the press to post the details and surveillance photos to help them find the suspects.” For a time, the Rag becomes a wanted poster.
That’s part of the problem: our site does not have a front page with multiple and varied offerings. It is linear; the story on the top of the thread is solo and center stage. “It’s out of balance,” my friend said. “There are so many other things happening in the neighborhood.”
“We report on them, too,” I reminded her, but I considered her comments. Perhaps a format tweak is in order. For now, we cast our net far and wide for fun, informative, and interesting stories to counteract the bad stuff. Our human, animal, and small-business profiles; openings and closings; meeting coverage; museum-exhibition and book reviews; political, social, and special reports on current events are chosen by design.
Crime isn’t a choice; it just shows up.
“I hate it,” I admitted to my friend, “but we do have to report it.”
Here’s to a peaceful week.
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We definitely WANT to hear about crime in the WSR – because no other publication reports local crime! Thank you for your hard work, reporters, editors and writers of WSR!
Why do you want hyperlocal crime reporting like an individual person getting robbed? What purpose does that serve besides to frighten you? People get robbed in every part of the city.
Do not normalize crime. Yes we UWSers want to know what happens here so we can keep our electeds accountable (and not simply scoff and say “oh well that happens elsewhere too”)
It’s about awareness and who and what to keep an eye out for … of course it’s important.
often the crime report includes a photo. This is someone readers, assuming the live in the USA might recognize.
You do a great job reporting it and everything else at a difficult moment to be reporting on (and living in) NYC. Not the first, not the last. Thanks so much for your great work.
If crime weren’t a problem in the community, there wouldn’t be so much coverage of it. But crime IS a growing problem here. Quality of life breakdowns are a problem here. Aggressive panhandling, lawless scooter riders, random attacks, mentally ill people on the streets, all of it, is a real, almost daily problem here. None of it should be ignored. Please let your friend know that it is, sadly, part of the upper west side existence.
Actually, I disagree with your opening statement: “If crime weren’t a problem in the community, there wouldn’t be so much coverage of it.” Over 200,000 people live on the Upper West Side. NYC is a major world city. Of course there is going to be a level of crime. But the ACTUAL level of crime on the Upper West Side and in NYC (not the PERCEIVED level) is near historic lows. We didn’t always have the Internet, social media or WSR. We didn’t always have 24/7cable news channels (and demagogues with megaphones) devoted to stoking fear. I agree that crime should of course be covered, but I think the attention that is devoted to it and the fear that appears to be rampant among a vocal minority of WSR commenters is wildly disproportionate.
Except for the lawless scooter riders, what you described existed on the UWS well before this great site and other internet-based methods of reporting existed. Instead of reading about it on a device shortly after it happened, you may have heard about it from friends, family, or neighbors and occasionally in newspapers or local news, but obviously to a much lesser extent and not as immediate. Instead of scooters, though, you saw crack viles. heroin needles, drug deals and crack houses. prostitutes of all genders and those cruising them, used condoms. and stabbings, and heard shots at night. all in the West 70s and below West 86th Street which was considered a “safe” part of the UWS. Friends got mugged on CPW and on the subway, and there were blocks you didn’t walk on at night like West 83rd and 84th between Riverside and Broadway, which is inconceivable today. I agree crims is certainly an issue now and people have a right to be concerned, but there is something to be said about the current seemingly minute-to-minute coverage of it (like on Citizen App) that plays into the idea that crime has never been this bad or that you’re risking your life as soon as you walk out your front door. (And, just to be clear, I’m not saying crime shouldn’t be reported.)
Thank you for reporting on crime. You are not sensationalist; you are honest. I don’t understand people who prefer to ignore the rising crime rate on the UWS—until something happens to them, of course.
I have one suggestion for your coverage. You will often report that a suspect was arrested, thanks to the great work of the NYPD. But you do not follow up and report that the suspect was set free hours or days later. This, too, is part of the sad UWS crime story.
Yes, a follow up is appreciated.
As a lifelong upper westsider, I know that this is a wondeful place to live with very low crime. The problem with crime reporting, which we need, is that it has a built in bias. It reports only the bad news. To get an accruate picture, every crime report would have to be written differently. Each report would have to say something like, “214,000 people live on the upper west side. Of them, 11 were victims of crime. Your chance of being a victim today was roughly 0.0005%.”
We need facts from the news. We don’t need an interpretive song and a dance.
By its very definition crime is bad news.
The old saying, “if it bleeds, it leads.”
Still true.
Yes, I don’t think that headlines like “10,037 USW Shoppers Today Weren’t Crime Victims” will be winners more than once.
Maybe a constructive direction would be articles on prospective candidates who value public safety above emptying Rikers AND who support other policies that most UWSers would endorse? Or are there too few, or is it too early?
“Chances of rain today is 40 percent. Chances of you soaking your shoes are much much lower”
Any coverage needs context. 1, 2, 5, 10, 15 year statistics for the same category. And concurrent reporting on NYPD/city policies.
Otherwise it’s just noise a la the NY Post..
Crime should be reported. If crime happens on my street (and a few have), I definitely want to be made aware of it. If a pattern of crimes is occurring in my zip code or adjacent zip codes (and often there are), I want to be made aware of it. If muggings or assaults are occurring in a specific part of Central Park, or on a sharply more frequent basis, I want to be made aware of it, and alter my routes and behaviors accordingly.
Even if one accepts that crime has always been a part of the UWS, the ability to be informed about current happenings helps to prevent people from becoming victims. This is, in my estimation, one of the most valuable if not THE most valuable function of a publication like WSR.
If you don’t wanna know, don’t read the Rag. But I cannot identify with the mindset of people who want to ignore that reality, and who prefer to go through life ostrich-like, heads buried deeply in the sand, and then one day wonder how some terrible thing could have happened to them.
You are presupposing that you can devise a foolproof plan and that there is no such thing as randomness. Nevertheless, to clarify (or correct) your premise , no one (or very few) prefer to go through life ostrich-like, heads buried deep in the sand. We just don’t want to go through life unnecessarily inflamed and unduly frightened.
You don’t need to correct anybody, or to presuppose any strawman. Nobody said anything about ‘foolproofing’.
It’s about risk management, and doing what one can to minimize risk.
WSR provides information to those who want to address that risk, even if we believe in the gods of randomness.
If you want to waltz through the ‘hood all Pollyana-it-can’t-happen-to-me, go right ahead. You can’t be helped.
How does a sound grasp of reality get translated into “waltz through the ‘hood all Pollyana-it-can’t happen to me”?
UWR readers are intelligent and can decide for themselves how “inflamed” or “frightened” they want to be. And no one should tell anyone else how to feel.
Here’s a crime that maybe you don’t want to read about, but this family that experienced it I’m sure is incredibly traumatized, especially the children.
https://twitter.com/aallasson/status/1687627471842357254?s=42&t=C0zdaYLRc_5dIU6Su3roJA
Their crime, they were Asian.
And no, these teenagers who terrorized them, have not been caught yet, although it was reported Ed to the police.
This paper, and their hard working writers, actually perform a service by alerting us, and sometimes catching. a criminal
I grew up with a weekly local paper that had a ‘Police Blotter’ section that listed the events the police disclosed and a brief description. What if the Rag did this on a weekly bases (like the Monday Bulletin) with all but the most serious crimes or the ones where NYPD puts out a media request?
I grew up with that too. In a rural-ish town of ~20,000 people, the police blotter is not so long. An urban UWS “town” of ~200,000 will have a much longer list!
I think you nailed it with this paragraph, “ That’s part of the problem: our site does not have a front page with multiple and varied offerings. It is linear; the story on the top of the thread is solo and center stage. “It’s out of balance,” my friend said. ‘There are so many other things happening in the neighborhood.’”
The WSR does an amazing job reporting on what is happening in our neighborhood, including reporting on crime. There is the risk though that better coverage of crime can give readers the PERCEPTION that the crime rate is rising. This can be the case even when police statistics don’t show an increase in crime, and even though (as some previous readers have commented) crime rates on the UWS are quite low (though of course any crime rate above zero is a concern).
I agree that a format tweak could be helpful to report crime, without giving readers the perception that things are worse than they actually are. Perhaps a weekly article summarizing less serious crimes that occurred and comparing crime rates to previous years’ rates to show of the rates are increasing or decreasing?
I think many readers don’t simply want to hear about crime but think it’s politically incorrect just to cover it. What about covering all crime in a separate section like old newspapers did with their police blotters. That way you could report on it more systematically, not just separate incidents but trends, and follow-ups after arrest, etc.
Great reporting Carol on crime as well as openings, , closings and other community news.
Personally I think a key objective of a neighborhood newsletter should be to provide its readers with information they need to know about. While I love the stories about interesting people and businesses, I also appreciate knowing about the existence of risks and what’s being done about them (or not). Avoiding reality because it can sometimes be a bummer strikes me as unhelpful. I’m thankful the WSR sees itself as more than a way to boost impressions about us. We are what we are, warts as well as delights.
Please continue to report on local crimes. If some do not wish to read, simply do not click on the story. We need this kind of information and I, personally, find it helpful to have some idea of what is going on around me.
I am truly tired of people saying the media should NOT report on things they do not like to hear about. I don’t like that porn is available online so I simply don’t seek it out and if it shows up somewhere, I click off or do not click.
There’s plenty of things in the news that I personally don’t want to read. So I don’t.
We have free will. Nobody forces anyone to read any store here.
Crime is news. Please continue to report all available information.
Personal and institutional.
I live here. I want to know what’s going on.
That’s simple.
Sociology/anthropology and any other ologys are a waste of all our time.
Save your rants for your social media accounts.
Please.
Of course you have to report the issues the woman on the phone objected to. Do not tweak the format. Please continue telling us what happens of interest–bad as well as good– on the upper west side.
News is everything that happens unexpected , that is not normal. If we think that a crime can be considered normal, and not reported, too bad for us. We can’t normalized crime, not even one. We must report all of them and require the Govern to account for them. Thanks the press does not give up it responsibility.
Crime. Yes, you DO have to report it. It’s because so many people don’t pay attention to what is going on and why that we are in this mess. Pay attention and go out and vote for public safety and maybe the Rag won’t have to post stories on crime so much.
If criminals stopped committing crimes there would be less to report. Let’s focus on how to achieve that versus woke righteous speak to make crime seem more palatable. It’s pretty simple. If you don’t want your name or face in the paper and you want to be a respected part of the community don’t commit crimes…especially against your neighbors? It is within your control in a neighborhood packed with resources and services.
If crime is committed in the neighborhood, it is representative of the neighborhood, and it is gives the right impression. Burying our heads in sands would not make it better. That’s what honest reporting is.
There is nothing more important than public safety. Without that, it doesn’t matter what other good things are happened in a neighborhood. Public safety is first and foremost. Once that is established, everything else just naturally falls into place.
If anyone of we readers could be the next victim maybe your reporting these crimes will make us a bit more watchful and aware of our surroundings. And maybe a bit safer on our streets .
The West Side Rag is the best community “diary” in the United States. Thus, chronological.
There are fifty-billion alternative sites where one can sort by topic.
The Rag is for those who want to know “what’s NEW.” Every day.