Bogus statistics
To address problems along the border, it means ending inflated reports of assaults.
You’ve got to wonder if the U.S. Border Patrol is replacing its binoculars with kaleidoscopes. How else can they look at one instance of assault along the border and report seeing 126?
The problem originated when someone in the agency opted to use an elaborate multiplication problem in reporting all alleged assaults . For example, one incident in the Rio Grande Valley Sector ended up being counted as, yes, 126 incidents.
How does it work? Try solving this math equation: Seven times six, times three.
Or if you prefer a word problem: A Feb. 2017 encounter “involved seven U.S. Border Patrol Agents assaulted by six subjects utilizing three different types of projectiles (rocks, bottles, and tree branches), totaling 126 assaults,” according to a spokesperson quoted in a report by Debbie Nathan, an investigative reporter for the Rio Grande Valley Equal Voice Network and the ACLU of Texas.
If you break it down, that’s a fantastical story problem better suited to an elementary school test. It has no place in a government report.
The border patrol’s definition of assault also seems overly broad. According to the Los Angeles Times, one of the 2017 “assaults” involved an agent in California allegedly splashed with “polluted water.”
Vastly inflating assaults only serves to stoke fears and convey the false impression that the borderlands are becoming more dangerous for agents, when the opposite is true. The fact is that the border is actually becoming safer, according to different federal government statistics on assaults and accounts shared by agents at a recently human trafficking conference in McAllen. At the April conference, veteran agents from that sector said that, despite occasional chases and mass arrests near so-called stash houses, the Rio Grande Valley remains a peaceful place to live and work.
Doubt their word? You also can just check out their other stats. The agency and the FBI annually reports how many agents were injured in assaults. Those numbers have steadily declined.
Other outlets had previously published the increase in border assaults without questioning the math — concluding immigrants had become “more violent.”
Last week, Vice President Mike Pence cited the bogus rise in assaults during a visit to the California border.
“In Fiscal Year 2017, we’re informed that attacks on our Border Patrol agents actually increased by 73 percent,” Pence said, apparently unaware that the growth is mostly due to a change in how assaults are counted.
The border patrol’s own inflated reports of total assaults should not divert attention away from the fact that police officers nationwide face very real on-thejob perils.
The FBI annually publishes statistics about on-duty deaths and assaults reported by participating local, state and national agencies nationwide to spot trends and improve training to boost officer safety.
It’s undeniable that border patrol agents do face dangers. Two Border Patrol officers died in Texas last year. But neither death was caused by an on-duty assault, according to the latest available information. One officer apparently died from injuries suffered in a fall. The other was killed in an off-duty incident that began when he encountered a belligerent man late at night in a bar parking lot, chased him and was fatally stabbed.
If we want to address real problems along the border, it means viewing the situation through clear eyes. Otherwise we’ll end up spending time and tax dollars chasing threats that never existed in the first place.