Dropping Crime

According to El Universal, the FBI says that the number of murders in Nuevo Laredo dropped from 18 in 2008 to just seven in 2009. Nuevo Laredo, you may remember, was ground-zero for drug war hysteria for much of the past decade, but it never was Juárez (more here). But one should be at least a bit skeptical of those numbers, because a) NPR reported 55 murders in 2008, not 18, and b) the lack of murders isn't the product of the government's triumph over crime, but just the opposite.