Media Coverage of Police Incidents
Don't let your temper flare too much...
There have been a whirlwind of news stories dominating the
news cycle recently. From the wrath of mother nature with Hurricane Irma and
now Hurricane Maria to the killing of a transgendered student at Georgia Tech
and the acquittal of a police officer in St. Louis. All of these stories have
deeply impacted communities and the nation as a whole. I want to focus on the
two police incidents though, while the hurricane has caused a great deal destruction
to our communities, there is nothing we can do about Mother Nature, but we can
talk about the societal issues involved with some of these police incidents and
try to create more positive change.
The Georgia Tech incident
A quick google search of Georgia Tech police and you will
slammed with hundreds of links covering the incident. The article I chose to
use for this post was the Washington Post article covering the incident. The
reason I chose this article is because it does a better job of offering both
sides of this incident in one article. However, in reading this article there
is still a very clear slant on the side of Ms. Schultz. Anytime another person loses
their life at the hands of someone else it is an absolute tragedy. When we look
at this case though, it is difficult for me to comprehend all of the backlash
that these officers and the department are receiving. The Washington Post article
brings up several statistics about fatal police involved shootings, citing that
the police fatally shoot 3 people each day and that a quarter of all those
killed by the police are suffering from some mental illness. The issue that have
with this is that the article lays out these statistics with no other explanation
as to what happens in these incidents, it creates the idea that the police are
actively seeking to kill people with mental illness and that is simply not the
case. What the article fails to bring up, is the fact that the police interact
with people afflicted by mental-illness at a much greater percentage than they
interact with the normal public. Naturally, it would follow that if there is a
greater level of interaction then there is simply going to be a greater level
of force related incidents because there are some situations that simply cannot
be resolved without the use of force.
The article goes on to discuss how GA Tech PD officers are
not equipped with tazers or other electronic control devices and how the
officer that fired the fatal shot had not been sent through Crisis Intervention
Training. What the article does not discuss is the slashing of police budgets
for these types of training. It costs thousands of dollars in equipment and man
power to send equip officers with these tazers and send them to this training,
and with budgets being slashed and grants being taken away it becomes even
harder for departments to do things like this.
The St. Louis Incident
As we look at the events unfolding in St. Louis, Missouri it seems like dejavu from the past 3 years. A judge acquits a police officers on charges where he or she is suspected of wrongfully killing a person, typically a minority. One thing that the article takes for granted and uses to manipulate its audience into a train of thought is that the average American does not have a true working knowledge of how our justice system works. This is continually the case with these incidents, even when we look back to the Ferguson incident. In that case a Grand Jury failed to give a true bill of indictment yet the media portrayed the case as if the officer was acquitted of all charges, which was not the case. In my opinion the media has a duty to educate the people on the issues that they may not be well versed on, and by not doing so they are doing our democracy an injustice.
As we look at this incident, the officer was in fact found
not guilty at trial, but the trial where the judge was the tries of fact and
not a jury. People are questioning the judge’s decision and calling the issue
institutional racism. The judge has even come out and spoke on his opinion and
said that he simply did not believe that there was not enough evidence to prove
beyond a reasonable doubt that the officer is guilty of murder. People fail to
realize the various standards of proof and the various courses a case can take
within the system. Once the case has been indicted the accused has an option to
plead guilty or not guilty and which kind of trial they would like to have. The
office chose to plead not guilty and have a bench trial, and I don’t think
anyone can blame him for this. If the trial goes before a jury, a group of
people that likely have a limited understanding of the law and who’s emotions
can be manipulated or a judge who has a thorough understanding of the law and
will look at the facts in an unbiased impartial manner, which is the way a case
is supposed to be tried. As a police officer in the current social climate the
choice seems like a clear one. The issue is that the media does not bring any
of these facts up in their stories, they only say that the officer was acquitted
on all charges but don’t go into the facts of the issue.
Wrap it all up
The final issue that the media fails to bring up inevitably
in every single one of these cases is how the officers lives are affected and
changed forever from issues such as these. I know this will not be a popular
viewpoint to approach the issue with, but are we not supposed to be fair and
impartial jurors in society? We, as the more educated population, have a duty
to remove ourselves from the emotional aspects of the issue and look at it from
all sides. The officer in St. Louis will never be able to be a police officer
in that city again, if anywhere in this country. He has now been painted as a
murderer and has a red mark on him. He and his family will likely receive death
threats from the extremist groups in the community. The only option will be for
him to uproot his entire life and family and move somewhere where people may
not recognize his face. We saw this same thing happen with Officer Wilson in
the Ferguson case. This same outcome is likely for the officer involved in the
GA Tech case. Being that a college campus is such a small community his face
will forever be synonymous with that case, and he will have lost his
credibility in that community. As we look at these cases from the objective
perspective, these officers were acquitted by the justice system the same as
any other citizen found not guilty of a crime. However, due to the intense
amount of publicity given to these cases involving police officers there is no
way for these officers to return to their normal lives, which is the gift that
would be afforded to a normal citizen who was involved in this same situation. I
am not asking for the media to not cover these cases, as they are important to
our society and the community deserves to know what is happening, especially if
there is a perceived injustice. I am only asking for the media to provide a
fair and unbiased look at the case, from an objective point of view and present
all sides of the issue, not just the side that sells subscriptions to their
paper.
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