Superficially, then, the initial coverage of Lee’s killing appears to be a case of what the great press critic A.J. Liebling once labeled “the futility of flapdoodle.” It’s what happens when uninformed or misinformed sources run wild, equipped with little but received wisdom.
That San Francisco was overrun by violent criminals was taken as gospel; a predawn killing in a deserted part of town was shoehorned into the prevailing narrative.
Never mind that the narrative itself is untrue. As my colleague Summer Lin reported, violent crime in San Francisco — homicide, rape, robbery and aggravated assault — peaked in 2013, and by 2020, the last year for which statistics have been released, cases had fallen by about 32%.
Source: Hiltzik: Bob Lee’s murder and the truth about crime – Los Angeles Times

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