Officials in a number of Southern cities have begun to question the high-ranking positons atop the most recent FBI crime report -- one whose usefulness is already questonable due to the fact that cities like Atlanta and St. Louis are missing from the list. Not due to the absence of crime, but because those cities did not meet the FBI's reporting criteria or deadlines.
In one AP story, U.A.B. criminal justice peofessor Bob Siegler suggested that that Tuscaloosa topped the list because 5,000 people drove away from service statiosn without paying for their gas. Criminology professor Richard Janikowski,who teaches at the University of Memphis, went on record saying that many of the southern cities on the list are surrounded by poor rural communities and unlike Memphis, which ranked 5th overall for theft, don't have wealthy suburbs to offset inner-city crime statistics. Since Memphis is blessed by having Germantown as a wealthy and benevolent neighbor, we all know that apartment murders, buglary, and high-end prostitution rings oculd never occur in any geographic region where collars-- among other htings -- are predominantly white.
In a related story, former FBI agent Peter Symonds was quoted as saying, "The fact that somebody goes crazy and walks into a store and kills five people, that is, in a place like Chattanooga, going to affect the murder rate." Since Symonds' statements can also be applied to a place like, oh, say, Memphis, such antisocial behavior is highly discouraged.
Now here is a look at Fly at the Wall's Fly-Point Doppler Radar:
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