NYPD: Saints Row 2 to Encourage Depravity

Guess what. Games cause depravity! So says New York Police Department (NYPD) union boss, Patrick Lynch.

Commenting for an article on the website of New York-based The Daily News (for an article lovingly titled, 'Letting game players kill cops and smoke drugs, 'Saints Row 2' is a sin'), Lynch said, "These horrible and violent video games desensitize young people to violence while encouraging depravity, immorality while glorifying criminal behaviour."

Of course, the Saints Row games are well-known to the police for causing depraved behaviour. We got drugs intelligence officer, UK copper, Detective Constable Steve Kelly, telling us last year that there was a "shocking similarity" between the first game and the bizarre rampage of a Portsmouth student who had been playing the title. Clearly it was the game that caused the 20 year old to run into traffic with slit wrists and a knife. Not the fact that he was off his tits on skunk...

Cops from the state of New York have had their share of games-related troubles, too. Detective Lieutenant Raymond Coté of Nassau County, NY, said of six youths in June, "They decide that they're going to go do some street robberies, emulating the popular fictional character Niko Bellic". Strangely, police weren't able to say exactly how they'd come to that conclusion at the time.

Still, despite such 'overwhelming' and ongoing evidence that satirical, over-the-top game pastiches of gangster life cause depravity, SPOnG would be interested to know how many of "These horrible and violent video games" the NYPD cop, Mr Lynch, has actually played - and what the crime statistics prove. We, you see, are of the naive mind endemic poverty and an upbringing based on failing educational systems might possibly have something to do with crime. But hell! As long as we can blame video games while paying investment bankers, kickers of footballs and bouncers of basketballs 1,000 times the salaries of teachers, who needs statistics dang-it!?

Of course, Jack Thompson, soon-to-be disbarred (in Florida) lawyer and anti-games crusader, had something to say on the subject. For a moment there, it looked like he was actually questioning Saints Row 2's artistic merits rather than its morality. He called it a "Grand Theft Auto ripoff." There was, of course, more. "As is true with pornography, as is true with violence, the subsequent products tend to push the envelope even more", he said.

SPOnG would be interested to know who at THQ invited Mr Thompson to a preview of Saints Row 2 so he could form that opinion...

^{Source: Daily News}