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Showing Original Post only (View all)Guess What? The “Knockout Game” is America’s Latest Phony Panic [View all]
Its not hard to see why media outlets have latched on to this as an ongoing story. The prospect of random assault from rowdy, aggressive teens is scary, especially if theyre uninterested in theft and just want to attack. Its as if were living in A Clockwork Orange, with our cities under siege by violent young men.
But its this media panicas well as the strongly anecdotal nature of the coveragethat should give us pause before we declare this to be a national problem. After all, this wouldnt be the first media furor over teen behavior. Recall the panics over wildingwhere teenagers were attacking innocent bystanders en massor headlight flashing, where gang members were marking their victims during nighttime drives. In both cases, you could find instances that fit either description, but in a country with tens of millions of teenagers, where you could find examples of almost any behavior, you need more than a few anecdotes to prove a trend.
With the knockout game, we have several cases in a handful of cities, as well as five reported deaths. Victims tell similar stories: They were walking down the street when they were suddenly punched from behind. Theres no doubt that its a terrifying and traumatic experience for anyone who has experienced it.
But the question isnt whether these random assaults happen. Of course they do. The question is whether this is a new dimension of urban crime, or a new name for an old phenomena. Most of the evidence points to the latter. For starters, its not hard to find reports of senseless attacks on innocent bystanders. In 2011, for instance, Washington D.C. saw nearly 1,700 assaults excluding guns, including a random attack by a group of teenagers in a subway station. Violent crime is a fact of life in American citiesthough its infrequent and on the declineand that includes muggings and attacks by strangers.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/11/25/guess-what-the-knockout-game-is-america-s-latest-phony-panic.html