The officer who fired a shot

Update: Highland, New York (First reported 03-14-13): The officer who fired a shot from his service weapon in a hallway at a high school has resigned from the police force. An investigation concluded that the incident, though unintentional, was due to “officer error,” the department said. ow.ly/jdPOQ

Md. police officer suspended over bathroom camera

GLEN BURNIE, Md. (AP) - Police in Anne Arundel County say they're looking into why a police officer installed a camera in a boys' bathroom at Glen Burnie High School and that the officer has been suspended without pay.

A student noticed the camera Wednesday and alerted school officials. Officials then searched all of the other bathrooms and locker rooms but found no other devices. Anne Arundel County police Lt. T.J.Smith says an investigation revealed the officer put the camera in the bathroom. Investigators said that no images or recordings have been found on the device.

The name of the officer, a 14-year-veteran, was not released. No criminal charges have been filed.

Officer suspended after gun discharged in school

HIGHLAND, N.Y. — A police officer has been suspended without pay as officials investigate an incident at a high school here in which his gun fired. Sean McCutcheon, an officer in the Lloyd, N.Y., police department and a school resource officer for Highland Central School District, accidentally discharged his gun at 1:38 p.m. Tuesday in the hallway of Highland High School here, the school district and police said.  No information has been released on why the gun went off, and the department's investigation is continuing, Lt. James Janso said.

Phoenix officer calls 5-day suspension too harsh

A Phoenix Police officer has been suspended after tackling a 15-year-old girl. The video, posted on YouTube, made national headlines two years ago. Monday, that officer appealed, saying his punishment is too harsh, fighting the 5-day suspension at a hearing. That hearing is closed to the public at his request, so we won't get to hear why he believes his punishment was too harsh. Officer Patrick Larrison believes he acted within policy when he tackled a 15-year-old girl to the ground. Police were called to the school after they say a drunk teenager got into a fight with her teacher, then started walking away when officers got there.  This YouTube video sparked a yearlong investigation. A disciplinary review board recommended a 32-hour or 4-day suspension. But Chief Daniel Garcia thought the punishment should be more severe and gave Larrison a 40-hour or 5-day suspension. Typically that's the maximum number of days you can suspend an officer. Larrison has since appealed the chief's decision and today he went through his first city civil service hearing. Sources told us Larrison has at least three experts within the department who watched the video and agree he acted within policy. The results of Monday's hearing won't be made public for about a month. That's when the city's civil service board will make a decision.

New charges for ex-Pittsburgh school police officer

PITTSBURGH —A former Pittsburgh Public Schools police officer recently faced new charges after another former student came forward to say he was abused by him.

A former Pittsburgh Public Schools police officer charged with sexually assaulting middle school students dating back to the late '90s faces his alleged victims in court during a preliminary hearing on Friday.

Robert Lellock was already facing charges for allegedly sexually abusing three male students at Arthur J. Rooney Middle School in the late 1990’s. The boys were all between the ages of 13 and 14 at the time of the alleged abuse.

A criminal complaint filed this week showed new charges after another alleged victim saw news coverage of Lellock and decided to come forward with his own story. The student claimed Lellock groped him multiple times when the victim was 15 years old.

The criminal complaint also said that Lellock is accused of offering the alleged victim $50 for a sexual favor.

Lellock is scheduled to stand trial on the original charges in April.

As of Thursday morning, there was no word on when Lellock would be arrested on the new charges. He has been free on $50,000 bond while awaiting trial on the original charges.

THE DOG THAT DOESN’T BARK. WHEN JOURNALISM CROSSES THE LINE.

A journalist should report that the Fairfax County cops arrested 2,600 people for drunk driving last year.  That is what a journalist should do. The role of the press, after all, is to report issues that need attention.  But the role of the press is also to publicly hold government leaders accountable to the people and that can’t be done if government is using the media as a tool for its own self-praise or if individuals in government are using the press as a means of self-promotion to advance their career, to say, police chief as an example.

The other vital role the press plays in a free society is to educate citizens so they can make informed decisions on pertinent issues and this is done by asking questions. As an example, in regard to the drunk driving story, a good journalist will ask, “How many of those arrests resulted in conviction?” because Fairfax County cops justify themselves through a body count. A good journalist would also ask:

“In how many of those cases did the cop fail to show up in court?"

“And how many of those cases were simply tossed out of court?”  

“Who was stopped? White people? Black people? Asians? Latinos? ” 

The good journalist should examine that side of the issue because racial profiling by the police is a serious national issue. 

The good journalist would also put the arrests in perspective. There are about 5,600,000 people in the greater Washington DC Area and in one year Fairfax County police arrested 0.0004 of them for drunk driving.  In a county of 1,200,000 citizens, the 2600 arrests would total less than 0.002% of the population.

Drunk driving arrests are down 2.5 nationwide in 2011 and 2012.  In fact, in the past two decades drunk driving fatalities have declined by 35% in the general population and almost 60% in the teen driver population.

So with those facts in mind, facts that were not covered in the story,  why were there so many Fairfax cops trying to arrest drunk drivers on a recent Saturday night, enough so that “the lights atop Fairfax County Police Department cruisers along Leesburg Pike lit up the night sky like swarms of blue fireflies".

Poor management seems to be the answer. Shouldn't the cops be doing something more productive and less intrusive to the community?  (A community where less than 9% of the force lives.)

 The summation of the drunk driving story appeared to be one of two things; one that the story was that drunk driving is a non-issue because arrests for drunk driving are down.  So what was the point of reporting this story at all?

The other slant may have been a cop glorification feature piece which was based on the baseless claim by the Fairfax County Police that they lowered drunk driving in the county through sobriety checkpoints, directed patrols and business compliance checks.

The problem is that slant discounts reality based on the facts above.

But there was a story here if the journalist had taken it one step further, one step into the uncomfortable,  and had asked the cops (and thereby the reading public) if they see any danger in randomly stopping citizens to find out what they can be arrested for.

A journalist should ask if those random “sobriety checkpoints” touted by the Fairfax County cops,  have a place in a democratic society. Should cops be stopping people they suspect of committing a crime based on magical and slightly scary “sixth sense” as one cop claimed to have, when it comes to spotting drunk drivers?   

Even more disturbing than that is the fact that the cop in question has an engineering degreefrom Virginia Tech but would have to work the third shift in a bedroom community “sensing” drunks on the road.

The journalist could have asked the obvious question…..if drunk driving barely scratches the judicial surface then why are the cops turning out in force to address this secondary  issue.  This could have led to two very obvious answers, both are generally assumed to be true by the general public.  One is that the cops are bored and don’t have much else to do and the other is money.   Drunk driving fines range from $250 to $1,000, ($625 average fine  X 2600 fines=$1,625,000). All of that revenue is poured into the county coffers and eventually into the behemoth budget of the Fairfax County Police.

Is there any truth to this commonly held rumor? We don’t know because the reporter failed to go that far. However, we do know that the cop who would rather work nights has a “lucky flower” in the car's visor. 

Move over Carl Bernstein, there’s a new gunslinger in these here parts.

But it was Bernstein who said it best. The reporter’s job is to "achieve the best obtainable version of the truth" and, I would add, the best obtainable version of the truth for the public’s good and not for the benefit of the government’s profile. It is crucial that the press be an outsider and never, ever, under any circumstances share the same aims as government, the legislature, religion or commerce. The only responsibility the reporter has is to their own standards and ethics.  This is no small thing because the free press is part of a larger right of free expression, a right that the public assumes that the press will help to protect.  

So in that light, a good journalist would ask “Is this story free PR for cops at the expense of the free press?”  And if the answer, even vaguely, appears to be “yes” then that is a very serious infringement on the role of the press in a free society and should not be taken lightly, no matter how innocuous the story.

The craft of reporting, and it is a craft, is found in the reporter's ability to research, to ask questions, to observe, to sift through self –serving propaganda disguised as news and then to place it in context so that the public can evaluate where the truth is. All of that makes the reporter the  community's witness to the process of government. Crossing the line makes the reporter part of the government. So what was this drunk driver story?

The press is a powerful instrument which must exist independently from the other main centers of power in society because, among other things, it is often in the best interests of those other power centers to control or quash the press.

This rule of separation is especially true in dealing with the well-heeled Fairfax County Police Department, which is widely considered to be the least transparent law enforcement agency in the state of Virginia. The Fairfax County Police have failed, repeatedly, to show that they understand the simple truth that the free flow of information is a civic responsibility because information, even when it makes a department look bad, is the fuel of democracy. Instead, the department has mastered the art of avoiding public scrutiny by simply refusing to deal with the press….unless the press wants to do a fluff & kisses piece about them. And that’s what is wrong with plopping down the non-issue drunk driving feature piece.  Reporting balanced news is vital to the health and well-being of a democracy as is the cop’s responsibility to inform the public that pays them. When journalists start backsliding down that very slippery slope by writing glory stories when the cops don’t deserve it, it is dangerous, unethical and sets a very bad precedent.  

It’s about integrity. If the reporter loses their integrity they have lost everything and they have lost it forever, for themselves and their publication and it is easy to lose integrity because the damn thing about a free press is that the fight to keep the press free never ends.  Rather it is a battle that is never won because the prize is much too valuable for other powers not to want to control it and to manipulate it.   And those battles to keep the free press free are rarely epic, rather they are tiny skirmishes, say, as an example, a police department noted for playing a one sided game, trying to get a local reporter to skim over the facts and avoid the comfortable questions and write what they want to see in print.  

NYPD Officer Suspended for Punching Three-Year-Old Son in the Face

A decorated NYPD officer has been suspended for punching his three-year-old son in the face. 37-year-old Jason Sharp, a detective in the Brooklyn gang unit, allegedly punched his child during a drunken argument with his wife. According to court records, Sharp said “I had an argument with my wife and punched the wall, I had a few drinks today." The boy was taken to the hospital and treated for bruising to his right eye, nose and cheek. Court records also show that he told police "My daddy punched me in the face." Sharp's wife, Michelle, says that she went downstairs to seek help because her husband had been drinking, then came upstairs to find their son, Connor, with a bruised and swollen face.Sharp, who's been on the force for a decade, has amassed 14 awards during his career. Twelve of them were for excellent police work, and the other two were "meritorious." Sharp has been charged with third-degree assault, fourth-degree criminal mischief and endangering the welfare of a child. He's been suspended without pay for 30 days.

 

police officer has been accused of punching his 3-year-old son

Long Island, New York: A police officer has been accused of punching his 3-year-old son in the face at their home. The child suffered bruising and swelling to his right eye, cheek, and nose. http://ow.ly/ijO2s

Manslaughter charges in connection to the death of a 15-year-old boy

Update: Little Rock, Arkansas: An officer pleaded not guilty on manslaughter charges in connection to the death of a 15-year-old boy. ow.ly/ioLDK