Entitlements
-Geaux
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Everyone Shut Up Already About "Looting" in Miami After Hurricane Irma
If you steal three pairs of shoes from Foot Locker, a worldwide retail chain that
made a $664 million profit in 2016, Florida's news stations will broadcast images of you stealing things on TV, Fox News will call you a menace to society, and people will tweet about how you ought to be shot to death.
If you run a company that steals billions in Medicaid funds from sick, defenseless people,
Florida will elect you governor.
As Hurricane Irma's outer bands lashed South Florida, a few small groups of Miamians were videotaped breaking into sneaker stores and carrying out boxes of shoes. Professionals filmed some of the clips: Local 10 filmed a group of thieves in Fort Lauderdale, which led to the arrests of a few suspects. In all, local authorities said 37 people —
total, in a county of 2.7 million
— had been arrested for "looting" in Miami post-Irma as of Wednesday morning. WSVN also filmed thieves breaking into a different shoe store in Miami, which City of Miami police then used to arrest suspects.
These are crimes, yes, and it should go without saying that you shouldn't smash windows and steal Jordans from Foot Locker.
But in the grand scheme of things, these are minor crimes. Yet local TV stations and Fox News have teamed up to blow the alleged Hurricane Irma "looting" epidemic out of proportion,
just like they always do after natural disasters. (Many of these same criticisms about overhyping minor crimes by minorities while ignoring massive white-collar crimes such as Gov. Rick Scott's firm's Medicaid heist, of course, can be launched at local news channels year-round. But the media's breathless, round-the-clock updates on a tiny group of looters in Miami is ridiculous even in that context.)
Everyone Shut Up Already About "Looting" in Miami After Hurricane Irma