Demonstrators rally outside the Minneapolis Police Department's Third Precinct to protest police brutality, on Nov. 25, 2014, in Minneapolis. AP Photo/Jim Mone
Chicago police Officers Michael Modzelewski, left, and John Conneely speak to reporters Sept. 29, 2015, about their role in helping save an 11-month-old shooting victim. (Brian Nguyen / Chicago Tribune)
If you’re a U.S. law enforcement official, no news, it seems, is good news.
Unless police officers are exposed by national news organizations for profiling minorities, shooting unarmed suspects, employing questionable use of force, or being charged with first degree murder-chances are you’ll rarely hear any positive news about police officers from coast-to-coast.
Unquestionably, national news organizations like PBS and CNN should be roundly applauded for highlighting some appalling police abuse and criminal acts, thanks largely to the growing use of cell phone cameras and dash board cameras mounted on police vehicles.
The appalling rough arm tactics used by police officers in Staten Island, NY in 2014 in the ``chokehold’’ of Eric Garner, which led to his death, leaves you wondering exactly who is training these officers, especially when dealing with unarmed suspects.
The officer who grabbed Garner by the neck, Daniel Pantaleo, was put on desk duty and stripped of his service handgun and badge, while Police Commissioner William Bratton ordered an extensive review of the NYPD's training procedures.
Similarly, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing when I first laid eyes on a video (April, 2015) showing Michael Scott, a 50-year old black man from North Charleston South Carolina running away from a police officer, Michael Slager, after a routine traffic stop. Slager who had been with the North Charleston Police Department for five years fired eight shots at the unarmed fleeing traffic violator, three of the shots entering through his back.
After the police reviewed the video, Slager was charged with murder.
Most recently, a Chicago Police Officer, Jason Van Dyke, discharged 16 shots at Laquan McDonald, killing the 17-old black male who was armed with a knife, moving not in the direction but away from police officers.
Van Dyke was slapped with first-degree murder within hours after the video's release, which additionally sparked a U.S. Justice Department investigation into the ``Patterns and Practices’’ of the Chicago Police Department, including a sharp review of its use of force, accountability, and how it trains its force.
Compounding these horrific police officer actions, among others, comes a new poll by CNN and the Kaiser Family Foundation, which reports that one out of five African-Americans said they were treated unfairly because of their race in dealings with the police in the past 30 days. Only three percent of whites, by comparison, said they'd been treated unfairly. http://goo.gl/qcBe7Q
Taken together, the casual television viewer to the nightly news might very well come away with the impression, a false one, that the vast majority of police officers are an unprincipled villainous lot with a predilection for roaming urban neighborhoods shooting unarmed black suspects and harassing minorities.
It is rare, indeed, when viewers or online readers hear or read about heroic and life-saving actions undertaken by police officers, especially on national news.
Why can’t national news organizations sprinkle their broadcasts, every now and again, with some courageous act carried out by a law enforcement official?
Do most viewers and readers know, for example, that according to the Officer Down Memorial Page that 116 police officers died in the line of duty in 2015 alone, including 36 by gunfire, three by assault, and six by vehicle assault? https://goo.gl/T056ae
Would it be asking too much for national television networks and U.S. daily newspapers to adhere to the twin journalistic tenets of ``balance’’ and ``fairness’’ when it comes to police officers, just as they do any other subject, organization, or institution?
When I asked Andrew Rosenthal, New York Times editorial page editor about the imbalance in reporting the good with the bad of police officer actions, he said: ``the idea of balancing “good news” with “bad news” just doesn’t go anywhere. Is it “news" when a cop shoots an unarmed teen-ager''? Rosenthal asked. ``Yes, because that’s not what cops are supposed to do. Is it “news” when a cop does an act of kindness or catches a thief? Not really. It’s just how life is.''
Mr. Rosenthal presented a valid point; but I still argue that in ignoring courageous actions by police officers, the powerful media behemoths like The New York Times and CNN are hammering into viewers heads the misleading notion cops are scum and dregs of society, instead of enforcing laws and protecting people and property from harm, which the vast majority of officers practice 24/7.
In light of the highly publicized and well-deserved pounding the Chicago Police Department is taking over the merciless gunning down of Laquan McDonald; along with the questionable shooting death of Ronald Johnson, a father of five, who lived on Chicago’s South Side, why not mention the efforts of two other Chicago police officers who were involved in a chaotic quintuple shooting scene in the Back of the Yards neighborhood on the South Side in September of this year?
The Deering District officers, John Conneely and Michael Modzelewski, abandoned department protocol in order to save a baby, 11-month-old Princeton Chew, who was losing blood after being shot during a family outing, an innocent bystander in which the boy’s mother and grandmother were killed in the melee.
With no ambulance in sight, Conneely and Modzelewski took the baby to the hospital themselves; Modzelewski held the child in a blanket as the baby cried and bled from the wound on the side of his body, while his partner, Conneely, was navigating the steering wheel with one hand and holding a handheld police radio with the other in order to notify emergency staff that he and his partner were on their way to the hospital with the wounded baby. The officers then made a mad dash into the emergency room where the medical staff took over to save the baby.
The Chicago Tribune, to their credit, reported on the life-saving episode. ``This is just a very small sliver of something that police officers do all over the country that never gets any type of recognition," Conneely told the Tribune, a 16-year veteran of the department. "Stories like this happen all the time that never get recognized."
And just last month, four brave Chicago police officers (Phoebe Flores, Eric King, Josue Pivaral and Shadi Sweiss), pulled two men from a burning car, minutes after a violent crash on the city's south side. The officers fearing the vehicle was about to explode with not enough time to wait for the fire department to arrive-lunged into to action to save the two unconscious passengers.
Another upbeat action by police officers; this time in Boston, which more than likely went unnoticed by national media organizations involved police officers Darryll Vinson and Jeffrey Lynch who responded to shots fired in the area of Sussex and Warwick Streets. The officers arrived on the scene on the South End of Boston and observed a man clutching his waistband as he fled on foot. They pursued the suspect who ditched his handgun, which was successfully recovered by the officers without incident.
Because of the officer’s diligence, they apprehended, identified and arrested a dangerous felon, who was swept off the streets, preventing an act of violence to the community.
It may seem trivial to many news editors to profile fearless efforts by police officers, but it actually goes a long way in building trust within communities that law enforcement officials are working for them in order to make their neighborhoods safer when they see it on television or read about in the newspaper.
Attempting to give some sense of balance in reporting on police conduct, additionally smashes stereotypes that view the police largely as villains when pursuing black or minority suspects.
According to David A. Makin, a Professor in the Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology at Washington State University ``the police need to be examined with scrutiny because they work for the people. However, that light also needs to shine on those other outside actors. We are quick to blame the police. However, the legislature fails to properly fund and commit to the programs we create. The police are only one institution within a fractured system. You cannot reform the police without reforming the very laws that created the issues we are struggling with today.''
-Bill Lucey
December 8, 2015
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