RANCHER SHOT! NUN KILLED IN CRASH! (2 people burned to death.)

by David Safier

Let's compare 3 news items.

1. Rancher Rob Krentz was shot near the Arizona/Mexico border. No one knows who did it, but the best guess is that it was connected with drug trafficking from Mexico.

The right wing screamers screamed, and this shooting became intertwined with the SB1070 anti-immigrant hysteria, even though SB1070 would do nothing to stop a similar situation in the future.

2. A nun, Sister Denise Mosier, was killed in a crash in Virginia caused by a drunk driver. The driver, a 23 year old who happens to be an illegal immigrant, has been in this country since he was about 8, meaning he had spent the majority of his life in the U.S., went to U.S. schools, and is one of many people who combine an alcohol problem with criminally reckless behavior. There are something like 15,000 alcohol related deaths on U.S. highways each year.

The story becomes an illegal immigrant story and makes the front page of the Star with the screaming headline,

Deadly Va. crash could further stoke immigration debate

3. Two New Mexico residents are burned to death in their camper, most likely the victims of two convicted murderers who escaped from an Arizona medium security, for profit prison. The security was so lax at this prison, the prisoners escaped using cutting tools an accomplice tossed over the prison fence.

The story gets minimal coverage in the Star (none in today's paper that I could find), and the Republic's coverage today is standard crime coverage with no linkage to the problems with private prisons in general or the particular practice of putting dangerous, hardened criminals in for profit, medium security prisons.

……………………

The first two stories have only a tangential connection with the immigration issue, yet the stories and immigration are joined at the hip.

The third story has a direct cause-and-effect relationship with the questions of proper incarceration and the use of for profit prisons, yet it's being treated as nothing more than a grizzly manhunt.

Is there an investigative reporter out there willing to dig deeper into some of the root problems with prisons in Arizona, using the prison break and murders as the starting point?