{"id":1177,"date":"2017-02-03T07:43:18","date_gmt":"2017-02-03T12:43:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/?p=1177"},"modified":"2017-02-23T07:32:29","modified_gmt":"2017-02-23T12:32:29","slug":"the-math-i-should-not-have-done","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/2017\/02\/the-math-i-should-not-have-done\/","title":{"rendered":"The Math I Should Not Have Done"},"content":{"rendered":"

There have been more than 60 bomb threats targeting U.S. Jewish Community Centers in the past month<\/a>, more than 30 of them since the inauguration alone (i.e., in the last twelve days).\u00a0 <\/span>Most of these have been domestic in origin (I have that from several sources, include a JCC security head who was told this at an info session with the Detroit FBI office this week).<\/p>\n

\"just
just another funny little joke, i guess<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

That number sounds bad\u2014but you don’t really have a benchmark for this, right?\u00a0 <\/span>I mean, you ask yourself “Well, how often do folks call bomb threats into YMCAs or non-Jewish daycares?”, and the answer is “Basically zero”\u2014so that sounds bad.\u00a0 <\/span>But then you poke around online, and find that U.S. schools get over a thousand bomb threats every year (in fact, I used to teach at an alternative school, and one of my students\u2014a very sweet and peaceful kid when I knew him\u2014had been kicked out of his last school for making a bomb threat).\u00a0 <\/span>And how often do schools get bombed?\u00a0 <\/span>(Actually, bombs are placed at schools more than you think: According to some old ATF numbers, nearly 100 devces are placed each year in schools<\/a>).<\/p>\n

So I started poking around the FBI UCR (Universal Crime Reporting) Hate Crime stats<\/a>.\u00a0 <\/span>Here’s a representative sample of annual anti-Jewish<\/span> \u201cintimidation\u201d crime tallies (“intimidation<\/a>” is the UCR category that includes, but is not limited to, bomb threats).\u00a0 <\/span>You’ll note a predominantly downward trend:<\/span><\/p>\n