Palm Beach County circuit judge Krista Marx sat down with The Palm Beach Post and warned that crime, in the words of the paper, "is inexorably moving northward from Miami-Dade like red tide."
Yes, because apparently crime is a mysterious and uncontrollable force of nature that is impossible to talk about in intellectually honest terms.
Don't worry Marx assures her Palm Beach constituents (fun fact: 70 percent of whom are white) that the county isn't the crime ridden crap-hole that is Miami-Dade just yet, but it'll be that way soon.
After nearly 25 years in the criminal justice system and 11 years on the bench, Marx has developed a few macro theories, primarily that crime is a sort of reverse evolution, and, in terms of Florida, it is inexorably moving northward from Miami-Dade like red tide.Really, Palm Beach doesn't have "scary" crime?
"We have crime in Palm Beach County, but not on the scary level of Miami-Dade; we have corruption in Palm Beach County, but not on the bench. ... Eventually, we'll be like Miami-Dade, and that's because we live in paradise and everybody wants to live here -- including criminals."
Marx herself presided over the Dunbar Village rape trial, which was far "scarier" than anything that's happened in Miami-Dade in a while. And where did that kid who got set on fire by his friends over a video game happen? Oh, Palm Beach County. And where did a high proportion of Madoff victims live? In Palm Beach. Miami may be at number 45 on CQ's press crime rankings, but West Palm Beach wasn't far behind at number 63.
What was the big crime story in Miami this year? The cat killer? Whatever.
The line of thought among other South Florida counties that a) "Well, we may have our problems, but we aren't Miami-Dade. Thank God," b) "But, Miami is going to taint us all eventually," is always off putting, not to mention stupid.
The reason Miami and the rest of South Florida has crime is not because, "we live in paradise and everybody wants to live here -- including criminals." It's because we have a shamefully large population living in poverty (most of whom are minorities) that no one, especially the rich who can afford to live in luxury towers or gated communities, really gives a shit about.
Don't kid yourself lady. Professional criminals aren't packing up to live in Palm Beach because it's paradise. Did the Dunbar rapists commit their heinous crime in Palm Beach County because it had nicer weather? Were they infected by some sort of mysterious algal bloom that emanated from South Beach?
It's a poverty problem, and, yes, unless Palm Beach deals with it in a better way than Miami-Dade has (and they probably won't), they will see their crime levels continue to rise, which isn't an inexorably red tide, whatever the hell that even means.
