Changing Face of Crime

Had I been cast from a more heroic mould, and not had a small child on my shoulders, I might have tried to tackle him. A young man, little more than a boy, was running towards us, chased by a policeman. A second policeman lay prostrate on the pavement, clutching his head.

But the boy-crook was a fast runner and his pursuer soon gave up. He stopped and turned back to his colleague, who had been hit on the forehead by a metal bolt flung at him by the escaped thief.

Within minutes a small, excited crowd had gathered around the bloodied and shaken policeman. “It was the Sudaca (South Americans) again, they are all criminals,” shouted a man who had not even seen the aggressor. In fact there was nothing to suggest that the car thief was South American. That, however, did not matter to the crowd.

Madrilenos, struggling to come to terms with an immigrant population that has leapt from 2 to 10% in less than a decade, believe they are under attack by criminal gangs from around the globe. Colombians, Moroccans, Algerians, Chinese, Russians, Albanians, Ukrainians – the list of races being held up as suspects is long and varied.

There is no Daily Mail or Sun here to scream out their hatred of immigrants. But Madrid’s newspapers, even those on the left, are always careful to identify the racial background of those arrested by the police. El Mundo’s Madrid edition is running a daily section on the “Tower of Babel of crime”.

Our downstairs neighbour, an elderly woman with Francoist sympathies and few friends is now convinced that Colombians are after her. She claims, for no good reason, that they have already tried to break into her apartment.

There is, of course, a germ of truth behind her fear. Colombian sicarios, the hitmen of Medellin and Cali, are beginning to turn up in Madrid. The murder rate has taken a sudden leap.

But middle-class grannies are not the sicarios ’ targets. My downstairs neighbour may be unpopular, but nobody is going to bump her off. In fact, the victims of immigrant crime are often, if not usually, other immigrants.

Take the capital’s latest murder victim, an Ecuadorian janitor gunned down in front of his two-year-old son. Or the unidentified eastern European fished out of the back of a rubbish truck last weekend, seconds before its compressor would mash him to a pulp. Already badly battered he had been tossed into a large rubbish bin.

The man most likely to win May’s race for mayor, Alberto Ruiz-Gallardon of the conservative People’s Party, has already proposed putting the city’s municipal police force – who are little more than armed traffic wardens – in the front line of the fight against crime.

The truth, however, is that Madrid remains one of the safest big cities in Europe. Where else might a baby-sitter walk out onto the streets alone to find a taxi at three o’clock on a Saturday morning?

Central parts of the city are far safer than they have ever been. The knots of knife-wielding smack addicts waiting to score on Gran Via, Madrid’s answer to Oxford Street, have disappeared.

There are, it is true, now Bosnian pickpockets, Moroccan bag snatchers and Romanian pimps in Madrid. Most criminals come from the city’s poorer, more marginalized groups.

As traditional Madrilenos themselves become wealthier, the city’s crooks are changing nationality. It is, if you like, the price of success.

(From ‘The Guardian’)

Choose the correct answer.

1. The crowd that gathered around the injured policeman thought the thief was South American because

A. all criminals in Madrid are South Americans;

B. there is a pronounced bias against South Americans in Madrid;

C. the people didn’t really care who the thief was.

2. Madrid native inhabitants believe they are under attack by criminal gangs from other countries because

A. the immigrant population has greatly increased in the past decade;

B. mass media breed hatred of immigrants;

C. Madrid’s newspapers always identify the racial background of criminals, which produces a certain bias.

3. The author’s neighbour is afraid of Colombians because

A. she has Francoist sympathies;

B. she has caught a Colombian trying to break into her apartment;

C. she must have read too many newspaper reports of crimes committed by Colombians.

4. What facts does the author give to prove that Madrid is one of the safest cities in Europe?

A. The crime rate has gone up but it’s still lower than in other cities.

B. It is safe to go out at night.

C. The city police are well-trained.

5. The basic idea of the article is to prove that

A. at present crimes are mostly committed by immigrants;

B. people living in big cities needn’t be afraid of criminals;

C. city dwellers shouldn’t be biased against immigrants.

 

Vocabulary. Read the articles again, find the following words and word combinations in the text and learn their meaning. Make it a particular point to use these words in the further discussion of the problem.

1. To specialize in smth, a drug dealer, to blame smth on smb, a division of labour, to put smb in prison, a pickpocket, a loophole, to be soft on/with smb/smth,

2. To come to terms with smb, to be under attack by …, to hold smb as suspect, a victim of a crime, to gun smb down, a crook.