Journalists Should Stop Relying on Cops’ Lies
American police departments are addicted to lying, and journalists are entrusted with reporting what’s happening in the world. Those journalists can’t take police at their word and act as cops’ stenographers.
Whether deliberately imprecise or willfully misleading, police statements are the last materials reporters should be drawing from.
On September 15, the city of Rochester, New York, released more than three hundred pages of documents related to the Daniel Prude case to the public. Prude was killed by police in March, when a spit hood was placed around his head and his breathing was forcibly constrained until he was brain-dead.
Buried in the stack of files was the original police report. Under “victim type,” where the attending officer had marked “individual,” another officer had added a short note next to Prude’s name: “Make him a suspect.”
An hour away in Buffalo, New York, during the George Floyd protests, police reported that a protester was critically injured after he “tripped and fell.” Less than thirty minutes after the statement was made, bystander video surfaced showing seventy-five-year-old Martin Gugino being shoved to the ground by police, and then blood pooling around his head.
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