Sociology of Crime

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/2009/04/19/2009-04-19_brooklyn_grandmother_is_slain_trying_to_end_fight.html

This article is about a 43 year old grandmother named Vickie Griffin who was stabbed to death outside her Brooklyn home.  Apparently she was killed while trying to play “peacemaker” between two men who were arguing but she fell victim to that same violence that she was trying to prevent.  The author of the article gives us a news script as the police first announce that she was knifed in the chest after she threw herself in the middle of a heated fight, next they transport to the scene of the crime where they say she was stabbed outside of her Brooklyn home and the cops actually transport there to find Vickie Griffin. Lastly, they identify the offender, Abdul Mattocks, 30 years old where they charged the Brooklyn man with second-degree murder and manslaughter (class notes, February 2nd).  The patterns of reporting of crime and criminals which we learned on this same day discuss patterns discussed by Gilliam and Iyengar that say that the media and other forms of reporting send out the message that all crime is violent, as 83% of news stories are solely dedicated to violent crime.  One main similarity between this case and the patterns of crime that we learned about was those relating to the victims as best discusses that anyone may be a victim at any time and that the ideal victim would be an individual who is a respectable person engaged in an innocent activity (class notes February 2nd).  Vickie Griffin was just that, she was simply a bystander to these two men fighting and while she was acting as an innocent witness trying to prevent the fighting she ended up being killed.  We also see from class notes taken on February 2nd that there are patterns which occur in regards to race and ethnicity as well; specifically in homicide we learned that 40% of victims are black, and from the article we can see that this particular victim was part of that percentage.  While looking at the weapons used we see that strangers are more likely to use weapons than non strangers as the offender who killed the victim was too a stranger and was part of the percentage in which 21% of al violent crime include weapons (class notes, March 4th).  As we know that the victim was charged with second degree murder and that the homicide took place in New York we see that the definition which they used was that the murder was with malice, intentional, and premeditated (classs notes, March 16th).  We also see that he was convicted of manslaughter which is also called 3rd degree murder which can be either voluntary (intended to cause death) or involuntary (where the killing took place without malice).