City Council Member: There has been a disturbing new crime trend

i will go with C ..
City council claims that fake call will get reduced ....
C is telling police can identify the owner of cell / private phones , so no chance of fake calls.

Waiting for OA.

hi mikemcgarry,
Could you please help me with this? In my opinion, the answer should be B and not C? What is your understanding on this?

A combination of B and C would have been the ideal choice. But between B and C, I would choose B.

C says that the police department is able to identify the owner of any private telephone used to call in and report a crime.

But what if most people do not have private telephone? Then how can public phones be removed?

chetan2u I have a question.

According to the question


And what is this the problem ??

And by citizens argument


there are many problems and out of those he mentions one.As per my understanding "the problem" should be the one that he mentions last...."What about all the crimes actually occurring that are reported from public phones"?

I do agree with your explanation but this question make "the problem " inconclusive and that is not a nice situation.

City Council Member: There has been a disturbing new crime trend occurring in our city. Members of criminal gangs are making calls from public phones to report serious crimes that are not really occurring but must be responded to by police. The gang members take advantage of this by then committing crimes in areas that the police cannot get to quickly because they are busy responding to the fake calls. To eliminate this problem, the city should remove all public phones, so gang members are not able to make these fake calls.

Citizen: While removing public phones would indeed solve this one crime problem, it will introduce many others. What about all the crimes actually occurring that are reported from public phones?

Which of the following, if true, best supports the claim that the city council member’s proposal will eliminate the problem?

A. A majority of calls made from public phones to report crimes are fake calls made by gang members. -No new information. This restates what is already stated in the passage
B. Almost all citizens in the city have a cell phone or immediate access to a private phone. -SO what? it doesn't tell as to how will the police find out the location of caller.
C. The police department is able to identify the owner of any private telephone used to call in and report a crime. -Correct
D. Public phones cost the city almost $2 million to maintain annually, money that could be used to increase the police budget. -Cost? out of scope
E. Several parts of the city in which crimes routinely occur do not have reliable signals for cell phone usage. -This will weaken the argument

The question asks which of the following supports the city council member's claim that removing public telephones will "eliminate the problem of fake calls".

Only option C provides the required evidence to support the councilman's claim.

Now, as per the question text, if public phone booths are removed, private phones will be the only means remaining to report crimes to the police.
Private phones are owned by individuals.
Option C says that any individual who reports a crime on a private phone can be identified.
Therefore, criminals, obviously not wishing to be identified, will therefore refrain from making fake calls to report fake crimes from private phones (which, as per the information provided, are the only alternative left to report crimes, fake or genuine).
QED.

Thank you Chetan. It was helpful.
I am wondering what is the use of Citizen's statement in this argument. Nothing.. right ?


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VERITAS PREP OFFICIAL SOLUTION:

Correct answer is (C). The city council member has a very specific goal with his proposal: eliminate the problem of gang members making fake calls to successfully commit crimes. One problem with the council member’s plan is that it assumes that gang members will NOT make the fake calls once the public phones are removed. Anything that supports this notion would be a correct answer. If the police department can identify callers from any private telephone, then indeed gang members would not make the fake calls from those and this shows that removing the public phones will have the intended effect.

For the incorrect answers, you should first note that the question stem is not asking about the citizen’s response so it is likely misdirection (designed to get you thinking about issues other than the specific goal of the city council member). For (A), this might seem to support the city council’s plan but be careful: the percentage of calls from public phones used to report crimes that are fake calls is not important! Whether it is 10% or 90%, the council member wants to stop the problem and you need to add something new that shows it will succeed. Answer choice (B) weakens the citizen’s response but it does not support the council member – if anything it suggests that gang members might just start using private phones to make the fake calls. For (D), the city council member is not addressing cost and while the money could go to the police budget, this does not mean the fake call crime problem will be stopped. For (E), this answer does not address the goal of the city council member. If anything, it suggests that removing public phones would be a bad idea but since it does not relate to the fake call problem, it is out of scope.

Here's how i broke it down:

Which of the following, if true, best supports the claim that the city council member’s proposal will eliminate the problem?
We need to eliminate the problem
A. A majority of calls made from public phones to report crimes are fake calls made by gang members. --> still leaves out some actual calls
B. Almost all citizens in the city have a cell phone or immediate access to a private phone. -->still leaves out actual calls
C. The police department is able to identify the owner of any private telephone used to call in and report a crime. --> there will be no actual calls left out
D. Public phones cost the city almost $2 million to maintain annually, money that could be used to increase the police budget. --> irrelevant
E. Several parts of the city in which crimes routinely occur do not have reliable signals for cell phone usage. --> all the more reason why public phones shouldn't be removed

Kudos if you like the solution

Hi, I am a little confused. The idea was to scrap all the public telephones, right? So how does it matter whether we can identify specific owners?

The problem:

Public Phones used to make fake calls

The proposal:

Remove public phones

Prethinking:

Something that says that the gang members don't have other alternative ways of making these fake calls. (If they could use their cell phones to make these fake calls then the proposal wouldn't work)


Only (C) addresses this issue head on.

BjornMattsson

This is a sound explanation, and something that can be added to this is that it also effectively counters the doubt of the other citizen. Even if public phones are used to make legitimate crime calls, people can now just make those calls from other sources that are trackable. So for this and the aforementioned reason, C strengthens the conclusion.

- Matoo

B is incorrect because the fact that everyone has a cell phone doesn't mean that fake call will go down if you take away the public phones.

C is correct because if you can track the calls it means that you can eliminate fake calls if you eliminate the public phones

This is just for my knowledge

If the question is unrelated to the citizen's opinion then why is the citizen's statement a part of the problem?
Is it just to create a confusion ??

Do these sort of questions come in the real exam?

The passage is structured in a way that citizen's concern is the problem. A normal reasonable person would expect that
the focus or the new problem has been shifted to What about all the crimes actually occurring that are reported from public phones? because it says "Citizen: While removing public phones would indeed solve this one crime problem, it will introduce many others. What about all the crimes actually occurring that are reported from public phones?" In that case, B responds to it better than C.

One might argue that the problem is still Members of criminal gangs are making calls from public phones to report serious crimes that are not really occurring but must be responded to by police. . so C is better. However, if you would like to stick to the only problem that first appears in the passage, why wouldn't you also stick to the problem being criminal gangs are making calls from public phones? If so, whether fake calls can be made from private phones is out of the question. It doesn't seem logical.

Not sure how they come up with these questions but for those who didn't get this one right don't lose sleep over it.

1. The citizen's statement is part of the problem as it provides some premises/info that potentially weakens the conclusion. You want to demonstrate how this information does NOT actually weaken the conclusion. Sometimes, it can create confusion as to whose conclusion you want to focus on, but this is generally indicated in the question stem.

2. Such questions can come in the exam, so be careful to identify the conclusion that you're being asked to strengthen/weaken before you think about what it means to do so.

- Matoo

B. Almost all citizens in the city have a cell phone or immediate access to a private phone---- we can also assume that cell phones and private phone owners are traceable from their numbers as we have phone directory and other methods to do that.

C. The police department is able to identify the owner of any private telephone used to call in and report a crime---- here we are assuming that identifying the owner of 'any private telephone' would include 'cell phones' also. This option does not say anything about cell phones. Cell phones can be made non-traceable too.

Might be silly but I am expressing my doubt.