Source: Los Angeles Times (CA) Contact: http://www.latimes.com/ Source: San Jose Mercury News (CA) Contact: http://www.sjmercury.com/ Pubdate: 23 Aug 1998 Author: Beth Shuster Los Angeles Times PUBLIC'S FEAR OF VIOLENCE SERVES VARIED INTERESTS Politicians, police, private firms gain by exploiting crime trends They are on the news almost nightly: carjackers, sexual predators, workplace gunmen, home-invasion robbers, ``road rage'' killers. By the numbers, there are fewer and fewer of them. Yet fear of them has held steady. That fear has overwhelmed reality, causing many Americans to feel more threatened by crime even as the nation has become a safer place in which to live. The reasons for that disparity are complex, and sometimes shockingly deliberate. Police stoke fear in part because they take crime seriously, but also to prime their budgets; politicians feel deeply about the issue, but also manipulate it to win votes. News organizations amplify fear by ratcheting up their crime coverage, even as crime declines, because it helps ratings. Security companies, theft-detection manufacturers and others tap into deeply held fears and end up turning a profit. In some respects, the merger of profit and political advantage has turned the crime business into the domestic equivalent of what President Eisenhower once described as the ``military-industrial complex.'' In that incarnation, the fear of Soviet adventurism was real and the enemy a dangerous one. But in their desire to combat it, military contractors, politicians and Pentagon brass congealed into a self-sustaining system. Similar structure In the new version, prison-guard unions, burglar-alarm companies and others, in effect, cooperate with politicians and police to perpetuate public fear of a domestic enemy, in this case crime. It too presents real dangers, but even as those dangers have waned, fear has persisted. Crime rates notwithstanding, who today feels safer? ``Crime, particularly violent crime, is very highly concentrated . . . and yet that feeling of fear lasts,'' said Eric Sterling, president of the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation in Washington. Criminologists note that, to some extent, a sense of security will lag behind reality because fear preys on memory. Even long after crimes occur, the names, even faces, of victims linger. Twelve-year-old Polly Klaas is kidnapped from her bedroom, then raped and murdered. Six-year-old JonBenet Ramsey dies of strangulation in the tidy town of Boulder, Colo. Police say it's not prudent to cut back on tough sentencing or a national police buildup, because law enforcement authorities believe they are largely responsible for declining crime. If police told people they could relax about crime, the argument goes, violence would rebound, and the public would be in real danger. Some observers warn that anti-crime efforts actually can breed fear even as they thwart crime. ``There are constantly new categories of violence,'' said Barry Glassner, a University of Southern California sociology professor. ``For a while, it was carjacking. . . . Now, it's `road rage.' . . . The effect of it is that the public hears a lot about what they think is this new pressing problem. You wouldn't have panicked three months ago, but there's more of a reason to panic now.'' Politics and crime Crime frequently becomes a campaign issue as politicians routinely tap into the public's fear. In 1988, George Bush hammered Michael Dukakis for releasing criminals into the community. In 1992, Bill Clinton won office in part based on his pledge to put 100,000 more police officers on the nation's streets. But why not let a candidate boast about crime drops, about increasing numbers of officers on the streets? The answer: That message is not as sexy and has much less impact. And that is nowhere more true than on television, where the adage ``If it bleeds, it leads'' has become the catch phrase for national and local news. Americans spent an estimated $14 billion on professionally installed electronic security products and services last year, and more than one in five homes in the United States and Canada had electronic alarm systems by the end of the year. Scare tactics Aside from their television and print ads -- which can be graphic in depicting lone motorists securing their cars, for instance -- some security, alarm and lock companies regularly promote products by manipulating crime data so crime appears to be worse. Those who work in the industry defend their practices. ``I think we are part of the solution,'' said Dave Saddler, a representative of the National Burglar and Fire Alarm Association in Bethesda, Md. ``The steps people are taking to protect their communities themselves are working. I think it's the random nature of crime -- that it can happen any time, anywhere -- that keeps people afraid.'' 1997 - 1998 Mercury Center. The information you receive online from Mercury Center is protected by the copyright laws of the United States. The copyright laws prohibit any copying, redistributing, retransmitting, or repurposing of any copyright-protected material. - --- Checked-by: Pat Dolan