I don’t know why the press feels the need to provide cover for law enforcement officers who screw up so badly they injure innocent people and their own coworkers. But they do. It’s not even the “view from nowhere.” It’s the “view mostly likely to exonerate cops by the end of the headline.” And since most people will only read headlines and (perhaps) a couple of paragraphs, the further you bury the lede, the better.
For example, here’s how CBS News first presented this story before being shamed into publishing a more accurate headline:
If you can’t read or see the embed, the original CBS headline was:
NYPD officer wounded in shooting with armed suspect at Brooklyn train station
The implication, of course, is that the officer was wounded by the “armed suspect” who (the headline implies further) participated in the shooting, presumably with bullets of his own.
But that’s definitely not what happened. The original reporting has since been edited, but here’s what it said when the news first broke on September 15.
The New York City Police Department responded after shots were fired at a subway station in Brooklyn on Sunday afternoon.
Police say the shooting was reported around 3:20 p.m. at the Sutter Avenue station in Brownsville.
Four people — three civilians and one police officer — were hospitalized, according to the FDNY. Interim Police Commissioner Tom Donlon said the wounded officer “is in good spirits and is expected to make a full recovery.”
Not a bit of this original reporting was true, which probably means the only source CBS used to compose this report was the NYPD itself.
That article has since been rewritten, with no note appended explaining that the original “reporting” was highly misleading. It also has a more honest headline:
NYPD officer, 2 bystanders shot on Brooklyn subway platform when police fire on armed suspect, authorities say
And the opening paragraphs now more accurately portray what actually happened on September 15.
An NYPD officer and two bystanders were wounded when police opened fire on a man armed with a knife at an L train subway station in Brooklyn, authorities said.
Police said the gunfire was reported just after 3 p.m. Sunday at the Sutter Avenue station in Brownsville.
Four people — one police officer, two civilians and the suspect — were hospitalized, according to the FDNY. Interim Police Commissioner Tom Donlon said the wounded officer, who was shot in the chest area below his left armpit, is at Brookdale Hospital and “is in good spirits and is expected to make a full recovery.”
That’s much better. But it still doesn’t explain — even with the release of the body cam footage five days after the shooting — why these officers felt it was a good idea to open fire into a rail car containing other passengers. The two bystanders shot by these officers suffered serious wounds. One was hit in the head and is still in critical condition. And the other has had her wound minimized by city officials and the NYPD’s talking heads.
A 26-year-old woman who was wounded when New York City police officers shot a knife-wielding man at a Brooklyn subway station was not “grazed” by gunfire as officials have said, according to a lawyer for her family. Instead, the lawyer said on Saturday, she has a bullet lodged in her leg and is unable to walk.
This scene was investigated fully, one assumes. The NYPD had to know exactly how injured Kerry Gahalal was because all of that would need to go into the report. To say otherwise in public statements is lying, the ultimate form of government self-service. This is another PR black eye for the PD, but apparently officials believed they could convince residents it wasn’t by applying a bit of makeup to the self-inflicted wound by pretending one person was, at best, barely wounded and repeatedly reassuring the public that the cop shot by another cop was making a full recovery.
The claim in support of moving to deadly force rests on this, taken from the New York Times’ description of the body cam footage:
The officers fire their Tasers, which fail to subdue Mr. Mickles.
Seems logical the next step would be something more lethal, but if you watch the video, it appears the officers were no better at aiming their Tasers than they were at aiming their guns. This is wasn’t a failure of the Tasers. This was a failure by the officers deploying them — a failure they would repeat moments later but with actual guns and bullets this time.
While it’s true there will occasionally be times where crossfire is inevitable, this doesn’t appear to be one of those situations where deadly force was the only option, especially when other people were in the area and, apparently, just as likely to be shot as the person the officers were pursuing. But that’s just how these things go: cops believe it’s their right to escalate situations in the direction of deadly force and deploy that force the moment they feel comfortable doing so. Every non-cop is acceptable collateral damage… you know, in the interest of public safety.
But when cops do stuff like this, the very least journalists can do is demand more information. And they definitely shouldn’t be absolving officers before the facts are in. This doesn’t help anyone but cops seeking to shore up a narrative before the actual facts come out.