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Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
ALBUQUERQUE — A spokesman for the Albuquerque Police Department said Friday morning that the six mug shots of “Memphis Mob” members printed on the front page of Thursday’s Albuquerque Journal were not representative of the gang as a whole.
Of the 47 suspected members and affiliates arrested or charged in connection with the gang, all but one are African-American, Capt. Joe Hudson said. But the six pictured on the front page were not the gang leaders or the most serious offenders.
“They were just a random selection,” Hudson said.
When asked if the six suspects in that random selection looked like the other members, Hudson said no.
“We gave them 36 photos total. …Probably three-quarters were clean-shaven and had shorter hair styles — they were more clean cut,” Hudson said.
“I think they did that for dramatic effect,” Hudson said.
Kent Walz, the editor of the Journal, said that originally the paper was going to run more photos. In choosing the photos they did use, editors tried to select images of the most serious criminals.
“No offense to the captain, but in the discussion about this issue, and it did come up, we [said we] didn’t want to put 35 faces in the paper, and the question originally was to make sure we had a racially representative sample,” Walz said.
Because all of the people in the pictures given to the paper were black, using a racially representative sample wasn’t an issue, Walz explained.
“So the instructions I gave the city desk was to use a limited number [of mug shots] and try to do it based on seriousness [of the crimes they committed,]” he said.
One prominent member of Albuquerque’s black community said today that he thinks the media is doing a fine job of covering the story.
“I’ve been reading about it, I’ve been listening to it, and I gotta trust my heart and I must say that I agree with the way that they’re covering it. It sends a strong message to other young African-American boys that this is not going to be tolerated and you need to get it together before you end up like these guys,” said the Reverend N. D. Smith of the Macedonia Baptist Church.
Smith also said he didn’t care whether the Journal picked the thuggiest-looking suspects for the front page.
“The Journal did not know any of these guys. They went on how they looked in their photo.” The message, he said, is “if you carry yourself like that and you hang out with those kinds of people, this is going to be the result.”
“I know a lot of people would say, ‘Why do they have to smear all these black guys on the front of the paper?’ but I don’t see it that way.”
Complaints of bias in the media’s portrayal of African Americans are nothing new, but it is a serious problem that has real effects, says the publisher of a local African-American magazine.
“Nobody should ever say that it’s not important,” said Ron Wallace, publisher of The Perspective 2.
“Why couldn’t they just make the statement [that the gang was busted] and put one picture up there, one picture of the ringleader, and talk about it? Instead they have to sensationalize it so that people will look at all African-American males and think … they’re capable of doing that.”
New coverage of the gang will affect Albuquerque’s small black community unfairly, Wallace says.
“It generates a new kind of fear. … Young people are going to be associated with gangs automatically. Nobody’s going to know whether they’re from Memphis or not.”
“When [the media is reporting] about crime or drugs they can sure find African Americans to put on TV, but when they start talking about education or something good, they can’t find an African American to talk about it,” Wallace said.
