Why I don't like being a victim

At the risk of getting myself into another mess, I have to say that this crime victims’ movement bothers me.

This morning I heard on the news that Gonzalo Fuenzalida was at Parque Arauco, the Santiago shopping mall, when the robbery of the Barros jewelry store took place, and that out of fear he decided to stop shopping and go home.

It turns out I was also walking into Parque Arauco at that hour, right in front of that very jewelry store. I saw the police running 50 centimeters from me, chasing the thieves; I even think I saw the brave officer who foiled the robbery. All very cinematic. I thought about taking pictures with my phone, but I thought better of it and didn’t; it struck me as morbid. And you know what? After the scare, I kept on shopping.

When people start behaving like mice, out come the cowards who think the solution is to arm ourselves to fight crime.

It’s true the government has unfinished business, but let’s not create a climate of fear just because crime touches us up close. I’ve been mugged, and regular visitors to this blog have read about what happened to my daughter’s class, and I’m not afraid, because I’m not, and because I must not pass fear on to my family.

If Gonzalo Fuenzalida wants to be a leader, he should stop being afraid. Fear paralyzes.

The figures shown on this movement’s site lack explanation and context. We see charts and indicators that make no sense, except that they give the feeling that things are bad, but if you look at them, they explain nothing. It’s all fear born of innumeracy, and of the natural ignorance of statistics and stochastic processes, which is understandable if we consider that the leader of this movement is a lawyer, who doesn’t seem to understand much about numbers.

P.S. The people who robbed my daughter’s class were arrested and are facing sentences of between 10 and 15 years. The prosecutor was quite effective in this case. If I were as innumerate as the people of the violence victims’ movement, I could say I don’t understand what they’re complaining about, since “justice works”. Fortunately my statistics teacher was pretty good.