I have two lifelong conspiracy theories. One is that the Saudis fund the “environmental” movement to keep us from developing energy resources.
The other is that the gangs are protected because drug money is flowing to politicians in these cities.
Certainly the gang theory is based on a long standing tradition in America.
One of *my* lifelong theories not of conspiracy but of bias goes as follows.
Media (for example this article) have a built in bias that everything that they breathlessly report on is always “escalating” “reaching crisis proportions” “reaching heretofore unseen levels” etc. etc.
It’s not even conspiratorial - it’s really just human nature.
If you’re going to write an article it doesn’t read well if you say “the murder rate fluctuates year over year”. It reads much better if you say “murder rates are off the charts”. Same for global warming, flu epidemics, foreclosures, etc. etc.
Readers tend to get sucked in and tend to believe the premise that “everything is a crisis” the likes of which have never been seen before.
For example many young people think that the air and water are more polluted than ever before when that is demonstrably untrue.
It could be that in this particular case the gangs *have* gotten out of control and the gang murder rate has indeed spiked but I’m always skeptical when I see articles that don’t attempt to justify their breathless tone but just accept it as premise.