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.
