Eight Feet Deep

 Beau­mont police shoot a guy out­side Sears at Park­dale Mall last night. That’s kind of impor­tant to me. I shop there. Some­times I have to do work at some of the stores there. It’s about two miles up the road from where I live. I’ve been going there since I was a long-haired kid, back to when the this won­der­ful, cov­ered shop­ping mall first opened in 1973. I would kind of like to know what hap­pened with the shooting.

 Here is what we know accord­ing to the three local TV sta­tions and one daily news­pa­per here in Beau­mont,  Texas. A 60-ish His­panic man was allegedly act­ing errat­i­cally inside a store at Park­dale Mall. He was sup­pos­edly bang­ing a shop­ping cart repeat­edly against a wall or door. (win­dows?) some­thing inside the store. Police arrived at the scene around 9 p.m. last night and found a crowd had formed and the man had — in cop-speak as relayed by the young reporter – “dis­played” a knife. Twice after the man “dis­played” the knife at police officers, the cops shot him and the sub­ject of the inci­dent was soon pro­nounced dead at Chris­tus St. Eliz­a­beth Hos­pi­tal. The offi­cer who shot the man, still yet to be iden­ti­fied by police, is on admin­is­tra­tive leave.

 Now all of the above tells me a lit­tle, but the indi­vid­ual reports from the Web and watch­ing the news last night left me won­der­ing and want­ing more infor­ma­tion. I’ve worked a num­ber of homi­cides dur­ing my years as a reporter and the first omis­sion I see in these news reports were a lack of wit­ness quotes or sound bites. I real­ize the inci­dent hap­pened just slightly before the 10 o’clock broad­cast and most likely around the newspaper’s night­side dead­line. But one sta­tion, Fox-affiliate KBTV4  has a 9 p.m. broad­cast and its stu­dios are in oppo­site sides of the mall from the Sears store. Their reports were less than illuminating.

 I try to give my local media the ben­e­fit of the doubt most of the times. I know what a dif­fi­cult and mostly thank­less and piti­fully pay­ing job theirs’ is. But I would guess most every reporter who cov­ered this story, at some time, shops at the mall. They go there when they want to get “man on the street” inter­views. And also some­thing that is impor­tant to me and should be impor­tant to the local media is that a cop shot and killed some­one with a knife. Was it, as cops some­time say, “a right­eous” shooting?

 Also, one remark by a reporter last night appeared to give the police much more than the ben­e­fit of a doubt when she said that after being around police it is known that if they or oth­ers are threat­ened “they respond as they see fit.” I really take issue with that state­ment. First of all, it absolves the police of any wrong­do­ing even before the shoot­ing review begins and prob­a­bly before the body of the dead man is cold. It leaves the impres­sion that police are always jus­ti­fied to shoot and kill in every situation.

 So-called “police-involved shoot­ings” (more cop speak), are never clear cut. They are even less so when a knife is involved. I have wit­nessed a stand­off between police and a knife-wielding indi­vid­ual. I also have viewed a video in court in which a man with a machete was hold­ing police at bay in his home. In both instances, the men involved were arrested with­out any injury. This was in a dif­fer­ent city and in one where I worked as a reporter.

 For­get the old saw con­cern­ing jour­nal­ists col­lect­ing the “who, what, where, when, why, how.” Some of these are more impor­tant than oth­ers and some of the oth­ers can be col­lected when wrap­ping up. And for­get that time is slip, slip­ping away, at least until it starts feel­ing like a bad gas pain. The 10 p.m. broadcast is upon us. The dead­line might run past 10 but not much more or  it could start cut­ting into the newspaper’s profit. Yeah guys, I know you have dead­lines. But you could have had sound bites or quotes from peo­ple who might have seen some­thing rather than strictly bas­ing your story on the local police spokesman. Even if they string yel­low crime scene tape from the Sears store all the way to High­way 69.  It’s amaz­ing what you can do when you are under dead­line. That’s why press asso­ci­a­tions and other orga­ni­za­tions award jour­nal­ist for best dead­line reporting.

 Now for the follow-ups. The edi­tors will want follow-ups until they make the pub­lic sick watch­ing or read­ing them. So how about hav­ing some real infor­ma­tion in them? Why did the offi­cer shoot the man out­side Sears? Was he jus­ti­fied? Did the offi­cer have non-lethal alter­na­tives even though he was jus­ti­fied? What kind of knife did he wield? The mall has unarmed secu­rity. Did they respond? Could they do any­thing other than call for police help? Why was the indi­vid­ual who was shot allegedly act­ing erratic? Does his fam­ily or friends know why? What was the man like in every­day life?

 These are some of the ques­tions that I would like to see answered. The local media in Beau­mont did a very poor job, at least in my eyes, of cov­er­ing the shoot­ing of this man at one of the city’s most promi­nent places and dur­ing the time of the year in which it is the most thick with peo­ple. I real­ize there are many dif­fer­ent fac­tors why they may have fallen short in their cov­er­age. Still, this one could have been a whole lot better.

 Hope­fully, the follow-ups will be much improved because a lot of folks want to know what hap­pened. I want to know.