When I was a reporter, I strenuously objected to ride-a-longs with cops. Anything can happen — and in this case, something really bad did.
These always turn into PR puff pieces for the cops. They’re not real, they make the cops look better than they are, and it turns suspects into convicted criminals without the benefit of a trial.
That’s the message of that piece, that ride-alongs are bad?
I don’t think so. In fact, the A&E crew is providing video evidence for the investigation into the killing of that little girl by cops.
They cops would have done that takedown with or without the teevee people there.
There will never be justice, but maybe the justice system can impose some measure of revenge on her behalf.
All cops should have news crews along with them all the time.
If you read the story, it becomes pretty clear that the cops did a midnight raid and used a flash grenade — both unconventional — because it would look better on TV. Plus, there’s the civil liberties question of using video of arrests, because it makes the suspects look guilty.
Wouldn’t the cops have hit the wrong house anyway?
Plus, they were going after an alleged cop killer?
The video becomes evidence of wrongdoing.
In any case, that’s not the takeaway from the piece.
The cop-teevee nexus is incidental to the larger, more disturbing picture woven by the writer regarding social conditions in Detroit — drifting into third world territory.
Thanks for that piece. I’ll be passing it along.
If you were ever a police reporter, as I was, you’d know the word “alleged” can have many different meanings.
[I was an alleged jornolist -> copy desker -> copy chief for a decade.
Thank god I’m out. You cannot edit the stupid out of society or out of newsrooms. My dad was a cop and I’ve done the night cop calls, so I know something about both cops and the tidy parsings of alleged.]
Cops cop attitudes when going after a cop killer and just like any other street or crime gang out for revenge, they go hard. These guys got played, went big for teevee and fucked it up. Hopefully the video will show that and the cowboys will get got. [Cops can bust in on a no-knock warrant, shoot your pet dog and just walk away, no alleged about it, even when you’re white and middle class. Google it.]
Unfortunately for the little black girl, the cops, the teevee crew, it’s all in the game and the game won’t end until people stop playing along.
Susie where/when/for whom were you a reporter?
Ever an editor at a newspaper?
……and now, ladies and gents we have someone named Jimmy Dean going totally off-topic to question the questioner; Susie’s credibility is not the issue. The credibility issue is whether or not the cops——whose record of honesty and credibility is and has been incredibly questionable over the last 50 years—-are really honest and persuing real crooks. Or, are they convicting folks without due process?