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Is it not "important" news when a two-bit shoplifter guns down a security guard in broad daylight at one of South Florida's busiest shopping malls?

How about when four members of a family, including two little children, are slaughtered in their Miramar home? Or when a father, his son and a friend are executed by intruders at an electronics warehouse in West Dade?

All that from just a week's worth of police-blotter entries. You see the problem: No other single place can compete with our volume, ferocity and weirdness of crime.

Considering the deluge, Miami's TV stations do a decent job of balancing police news with health, education and politics. Some days, it isn't easy.

Give viewers a choice between an informative story about a new low-cholesterol diet or a grisly tale about sickos stealing human heads out of crypts, and they'll dial up the cadavers every time.

For the crime-content survey, researchers in eight markets studied a half-hour of news broadcasts on four random days. Wow, that's two whole hours of TV in each city—and who's calling whom shallow?

(Incredibly, the most infamous of our local stations, WSVN-Channel 7, finished third in the body-bag derby. No talk yet of a slander suit.)

One hole in the methodology: Only English-speaking TV stations were studied. Another flaw: Only 6 P.M. broadcasts were analyzed. Many stations start the news at 5 P.M., and in-depth features often air that first hour.

That's not to say some crime stories aren't overplayed and exploited on TV, sometimes disgracefully. It's also true that some are underplayed.

In any case, there aren't many news directors who wouldn't love to get more time for school issues, medical breakthroughs, political analysis and I-Team investigations.

The problem is, news keeps happening. You can't keep it off the air.

To insinuate that crime coverage isn't serious journalism is to repudiate one of the media's essential roles. People want to be safe in their communities, and they deserve to know when they're not.

One reason that serious crime fell so sharply in New York is that the media kept a spotlight on it. As for the use of "sensational video" decried by Professor Angotti, Anthony Windes probably isn't complaining.

He's the Sears guard whose shooting was captured by a store camera. The chilling replay, widely broadcast, is what enabled police to identify the shoplifter who allegedly pulled the trigger.

How much more important can TV news be?

A war looms on gun sales

June 18, 1998

If the National Rifle Association gets its way, Florida will hang on to its dubious reputation as America's biggest flea market for illegal firearms.

The NRA has promised to "do whatever it takes" to kill a proposed constitutional amendment that would seal a gaping hole in the state's gun laws, and make it harder for itinerant traffickers to restock their arsenals here.

As it stands, unscrupulous dealers working the Florida circuit can sell practically any type of weapon to anybody, as long as the transaction occurs at a gun show or flea market. Sales by firearms "collectors" at such events currently are exempt from the cooling-off period and background check that apply at retail gun shops.

The result is that outlaw dealers slither from one gun show to the next, falsely claiming to be collectors or one-time sellers. In this way thousands of high-powered weapons are peddled to buyers who haul them out of the state.

It's as easy as buying a Slurpee, and requires the same paperwork: none.

Florida is the prime source of illegal handguns and street weapons confiscated by police in New York and other seaboard cities. Next to orange juice and cocaine, guns are our most lucrative interstate freight.

Law enforcement officials, backed by Gov. Lawton Chiles, lobbied to get the flea-market loophole closed by the Legislature—a lost cause. Most lawmakers are either scared of the NRA, or politically beholden to it.

So prosecutors and police turned instead to the Constitution Revision Commission, which was writing a slate of amendments for next November's ballot. The commission crafted a firearms measure that has provoked a frantic war cry from NRA leaders.

The last time Florida voters were given a voice on a gun control law, it passed by a landslide.That was the 1990 amendment requiring a three-day wait and criminal records check for handgun purchases.

The NRA whined and wailed. It said the law was unnecessary because criminals don't buy guns at gun stores.

Turns out the NRA was wrong again. Since the amendment was adopted, background checks have prevented thousands of convicted felons from purchasing handguns at retail outlets.

But, until now, the law couldn't stop those same felons from buying a suitcase full of Clocks from a friendly "collector" at the weekend gun show.

The new amendment gives counties the power to close that insane loophole by requiring records checks on all gun sales on property "to which the public has the right of access"—a provision strongly supported by law enforcement in Miami-Dade and other urban areas.

The NRA opposes it virulently, saying communities have no right to make or enforce their own firearms laws. The courts say otherwise, and early polls show widespread support for the new ballot measure.

As fall approaches, the gun lobby will launch a media blitz to scare voters away from the gun-show amendment. Don't be surprised if the NRA models its campaign after the one Big Sugar ran to defeat the Everglades cleanup amendment in 1996.

The cane growers spent millions proclaiming that the penny-a-pound proposal was a new tax on consumers—a complete lie, but it worked. Look for the NRA to try the same thing.

We'll hear how the gun amendment is a diabolical step toward mandatory gun licensing, or even government confiscation! Maybe if we're really lucky, they'll trot out Charlton Heston for some doomsday-style TV spots.

It should be quite an act, and if it somehow succeeds Florida will remain the prime shopping mecca for the country's underground gun traffickers.

See It like a Native

700 more cops will not solve crime problem

September 20, 1985

On Wednesday the Metro Commission wisely snuffed a scheme that would have raised property taxes to put 700 more cops on the streets. The Dragnet Tariff, I call it.

It's hard to imagine how otherwise sane and circumspect members of Miami Citizens Against Crime could have conceived something so lame and simple-minded. Maybe this is what happens when wealthy white folks in the suburbs get a gritty taste of urban crime.

When the corporate VP's wife is too scared to drive to Dadeland, when an executive's home is invaded by thugs, when robbers move from the projects onto the interstate—then we've got ourselves a crime wave.

Suddenly the streets aren't safe. Suddenly we need more cops.

Tell that to the grandmother in Liberty City who's lucky to make it to the Pantry Pride without losing her purse to thieves.

Or the widow on South Beach with triple dead bolts on the door.

Or the Hialeah cabbie who gets a pistol shoved in his ear.

For these people, fear is nothing new. They don't need to see the FBI statistics, and they don't need histrionics from downtown businessmen. And they definitely don't need more police—they need the ones we've already got put to better use.

Since 1980, Metro's police roster has grown 48 percent, from 1,480 to 2,195 officers. At the same time, the city of Miami added 61 percent more police, from 660 to 1,062.

For five years we've been throwing more cops at the criminals and what have we got to show for it? The highest murder rate in America, and the second highest violent crime rate.