Law Prof: MS-13 Isn’t a Big Deal and Donald Trump Is a Racist for Mentioning Them

Screen capture from NYT video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbEe8x2O7Qg

One of the gifts of Twitter is that by its ubiquity and brevity it gives people who are highly educated, but stupid, and arrogant a convenient platform for beclowning themselves. The ability to get their ideas before tens of thousands, if not millions, of people is catnip for the arrogance. And the enforced brevity strips away the ponderous verbiage they’ve made a career of hiding behind.

The chrysalis event in what follows is Donald Trump referring to the MS-13 street gang as “animals” at a White House event last week. As I showed yesterday, this is far from the first time that he’s used that description or that particular group. What made it different this time was the media tried to create a false narrative that Trump had referred to all immigrants as animals and then, yesterday, the White House doubled down on the use of animal to refer to MS-13. They used the word eight times in one press release.

Here we go:

If this was about public safety instead of demonizing immigrants, perhaps this administration wouldn’t make testifying against MS-13 a death sentence. pic.twitter.com/XoH09Hcny2

— John Pfaff (@JohnFPfaff) May 21, 2018

It isn’t about demonizing immigrants because all immigrants aren’t members of violent street gangs.

MS-13 is responsible for 207 murders since 2012.

Between 2012 and 2016, there were over 76,000 murders in the US.

That means MS-13 is responsible for less than 0.3% of all US murders during that time.

The dog whistle deafens. https://t.co/wWqIvIJVQq pic.twitter.com/O6Dsu6K3VT

— John Pfaff (@JohnFPfaff) May 21, 2018

This is how someone who took Statistics for Dummies…or a shameless partisan…or both… would look at the problem. MS-13 doesn’t really operate outside of its own community. While you might find they totally dominate some Salvadoran neighborhoods, you won’t find them getting all violent in Beverly Hills. In short, they operate like virtually every other immigrant criminal underground (Dutch, German, Jewish, Irish, Italian, Russian) in that they focus their activities in ethnic enclaves where people may be reluctant to contact authorities or they may not know that their are law enforcement agencies who can help. If you took any similar time span from the height of Mafia power, you’d find similar murder rates. Why? Because their stock in trade is not murder. They kill for revenge or to intimidate. They are vicious animals…there, I said it…but they aren’t stupid.

From a methodology standpoint, he’s being deliberately misleading. The gang has a max of 10,000 members, so commonsense tells you that comparing their murders to murders committed by a total population of 300 million is dishonest. If you look at the rate of murder committed by the population (i.e. 202 by 10,000 vs 76,000 by 300,000,000) you see that MS-13 is much more lethal by an orders of magnitude than the generic murder rate. And all of those 76,000 murders are not revenge killings or murders for hire or murders to intimidate so they really aren’t the same thing. What he’s doing is taking apples and comparing them to bananas as though he’s rehearsing for a CNN gig.

And the arrest data? 500 arrests? We arrest 10 MILLION people every year. Since 2012, there have been 92 arrests in California—a state that arrests over 1 MILLION people PER YEAR.

— John Pfaff (@JohnFPfaff) May 21, 2018

What does this mean? First, anyone who claims gang affiliation data in arrest records is close to accurate is simply selling you a product that doesn’t exist. But even if it were, let’s go back to the Mafia analogy. There weren’t a lot of arrests of Mafioso. Why? Because they were part of an insular community where people were reluctant to turn in one of their own to the authorities. And they were profoundly dangerous men who didn’t like informers. This takes us to the low level of murders.

And the MS-13-connected data all comes from the CIS, an anti-immigration group. So, if anything, they’re going to take a very generous definition of “MS-13-affiliated.” And this is the best they can do.

— John Pfaff (@JohnFPfaff) May 21, 2018

Ah, yes. The old stand-by. Attack the source.

I. AM NOT. DEFENDING. MS-13.

I am fundamentally disagreeing with the dangerous use of “animal,” and pointing out that no one–NO ONE–should be called an “animal.” No one.

Also, that their impact is so little lays bare the dog whistle that is the White House’s concern. https://t.co/DR8ZeGKExt

— John Pfaff (@JohnFPfaff) May 21, 2018

Why, yes you are defending MS-13. You are claiming that a violent street gang that has preys on immigrant communities is no big deal because they don’t kill very many people and Trump is a racist.

Yes. Yes we are.

Anyone who spends any time in criminal justice policy knows the danger of this sort of fear mongering and where it heads.

There’s a reason why Trump is targeting MS-13, and it’s not crime policy. https://t.co/QbtvRE38y4

— John Pfaff (@JohnFPfaff) May 21, 2018

Tell us, where does it head? Does it head the same place as calling NRA members terrorists? Does it head the same place as blaming law abiding gun owners for school shootings. You have American history as your model. Please show us where it leads. Because history tells us that it leads to a Kefauver Committee and to a relentless public spotlight that eradicates an organized crime group.

This argument is juvenile. It is mathematically illiterate. It ignores history. It is framed totally by this guy’s dislike for Trump.

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