NPR Station’s “Investigation” Goes Where Their Narrative Led Them

 

shutterstock_56280433In recent weeks, Southern California National Public Radio affiliate KPCC produced web and broadcast “analysis” of Officer-Involved Shootings (OIS) in Los Angeles County over the last five years. Their quest, per the website, was to establish “how often” law enforcement shoots suspects in LA County. They did anything but.

The project was built on examinations of the LA County District Attorney’s reports on OIS incidents and coroners’ reports for fatal shootings, and included an extensive database and website, from which were generated radio reports focusing on certain discrete aspects of the data. Having covered use-of-force issues for 20 years, I found the reports were predictably biased with selective, cherry-picked data framed to generate innuendo and misconceptions.

Almost every “Officer-Involved” radio report opened with three facts KPCC “discovered”: A quarter of all people shot by LA law enforcement are unarmed. About 23 percent are black, a number disproportionate to their 8 percent share of the population. And, no officer has been prosecuted for an on-duty shooting in 15 years.

“What’s the solution?” queried the series’ final segment, without specifying the problem to solve. “Is this a problem?” would be the question after an objective look at the facts.

Many of the answers are in plain sight, though unpleasant and ill-fitted to KPCC’s narrative.  For example: Much attention was devoted to the disproportion of African Americans killed by the police. Hints of racism peppered the hour-long conversation that Air Talk host Larry Mantle devoted to this issue. Yet it took a caller to Mantle’s show (me) to ask if maybe – just maybe – blacks are disproportionately killed by cops because cop-killers are vastly disproportionately black.

In fact, while blacks make up roughly 12 percent of the US population, 39 percent of cop-killers are black (224 of 563 between 2005 and 2014, according to the FBI). That single omitted fact puts the 23 percent figure in a very different context.

That doesn’t mean biased policing or unjustified shootings never happen. But, each OIS stands alone as a set of facts addressing a specific perceived threat. KPCC made no exploration of the threat aspect whatsoever.

Perhaps the most significant fact is one the KPCC team essentially ignored: OIS are extremely rare. This was allegedly KPCC’s whole point. Their “How We Did It” web page states they “set out to analyze how often on-duty [local law enforcement] shot another person.” But, little reporting explored that question.

Over the five years examined, only 700 of the area’s 25,000 cops were in shootings. That figure was mentioned on just one web page and unmentioned in hours of audio I reviewed. But even 3 percent is extremely misleading.

Consider the LAPD. Their OIS incidents doubled in 2015, to 45. Arrests are down almost 10 percent to roughly 115,000 this year. So, in a time when arrests are shrinking and shootings have exploded, Angelenos still have much less than a 1-in-2,000 chance of being shot by a cop – if arrested. That’s 1/20th of one percent of all arrests.

But, those 115,000 arrests exclude millions of other contacts, like interviews and traffic stops.  If each of the LAPD’s 9,878 sworn officers contacted just one person per day this year, there have been over 3 million contacts. Yet, just 45 shootings resulted. The unspoken answer to KPCC’s “how often” question is: “rarely.”

Perhaps most disappointing was KPCC’s wasted chance to truly broaden understanding of the reasons people are shot and the context of the threat to officers. There was no examination of the most critical question: What’s different about the tiny fraction of citizen contacts that result in shootings? There was no examination of use-of-force training content or reporter’s experiences in force simulations.

Presumably they made no such effort. There was no discussion of the threats officers face. There was no mention of the innumerable Internet videos that show both officers shooting suspects and being shot by them, despite the often repeated statement that such videos will shed light on the topic.

KPCC often emphasized that half of the 97 “unarmed” people shot by police had put their hands out of sight or moved toward their waistbands. Mentioned only once was this key statistic: Police shot 148 people who failed to show their hands or made such movements. Of them, 101 were actually armed. So, shooting someone who won’t show their hands is often a sound decision.

The reports made mention that in 320 of the 375 incidents reviewed, officers did not use any other weapons first. There was no exploration of how often use of another weapon was practical in terms of timing, threat or availability. Regardless, they tossed out the figure absent any context.

Equally ignored was the key driver of every shooting – the consequence of not shooting. The line between being killed, killing an assailant and a controversial tragedy is frightfully thin and grey – and fundamental to the issue.

If KPCC wanted build understanding of why shooting an unarmed person may be legally justifiable, it needed only review the January video of Flagstaff, AZ officer Tyler Stewart’s murder. He was shot in a fraction of a second by a suspect whose hands were stuffed in his pockets – seconds after denying he was armed. Comparing this video to that of the 2013 killing of an unarmed man by Gardena Police (who clearly reached to his waistband) or 12-year-old Cleveland resident Tamir Rice would be enlightening. But, no.

Similarly, KPCC offered no “analysis” of data reflecting the dynamics of shootings, like elapsed time from when an officer sees a suspect to the actual shooting. Often, this is mere seconds, providing a sense of how rapidly these engagements develop and why split-second decisions are necessary and necessarily imperfect.

KPCC is right about one thing. The data is not uniform and is hard to assemble. But misrepresenting and omitting facts to create more misperception is worse than having no data at all.

Published in Policing
Like this post? Want to comment? Join Ricochet’s community of conservatives and be part of the conversation. Join Ricochet for Free.

There are 46 comments.

Become a member to join the conversation. Or sign in if you're already a member.
  1. lesserson Member
    lesserson
    @LesserSonofBarsham

    Brian Clendinen: Yes I agree seconds matter; but cops way over exaggerate how dangerous of a job they really have when it look at actual injury rates…

    I get where you’re coming from in your comment but this isn’t accurate. An oil rig worker has a dangerous job because of accidents. When you’re job consistently puts you in contact with an element of society that may or may not be willing to shoot their way out of a traffic ticket (and you’ll never know which one it is) you can’t legitimately say it’s exaggerated. If we’re talking officers that do paperwork, sure, but the guys that interact daily with the public? Not exaggerated, just under appreciated in its near random dangerousness.

    • #31
  2. Man With the Axe Inactive
    Man With the Axe
    @ManWiththeAxe

    Brian Clendinen: cops way over exaggerate  how dangerous of a job they really have when it look at actual injury rates

    There is a lot of danger to police officers that doesn’t show up in the statistics on how many of them were shot.

    Some of those who were not shot were saved by the fact that they shot their assailants before they managed to shoot the officers. Many were shot at but the shots missed. Many were attacked by other, less lethal means, e.g., the Baltimore officers who had stones thrown at them. Many risked their lives in high-speed chases. This is just off the top of my head and my knowledge of police work comes from watching TV.

    • #32
  3. Shane McGuire Member
    Shane McGuire
    @ShaneMcGuire

    Excellent post.

    • #33
  4. The Reticulator Member
    The Reticulator
    @TheReticulator

    Freesmith: The correct way to handle NPR would be to dismiss everyone employed there and replace them, at extraordinarily high salaries, with aggressively conservative and free market hosts, reporters and production people who actually liked the American people and its mainstream culture. The terminated liberals would squeal, but the ratings would doubtless go up. Conservatives would use the tools of the Left against the Left for a change.

    You do that and those aggressively conservative people will turn into leftists.

    • #34
  5. Robert C. J. Parry Member
    Robert C. J. Parry
    @RobertCJParry

    KPCC’s Vice President for Content requested that I post the following reply to my critique, and I shall do so without parsing or comment:

    We at KPCC welcome comment on our journalism and would note that most of your points rely on the data our journalists put together to provide the first public accounting of officer-involved shootings in LA County over a five-year period. You are welcome to your own interpretation of this data, which succeeded in answering basic questions that previously were impossible for the public to evaluate: How often do police shoot, and in what circumstances? What patterns can be identified in these shootings?

    However, you are wrong in your assumptions and declarations about any preset narrative on our part or “cherry-picking” of data — as noted, your arguments all cited facts that were reported in our stories. The series played out over two weeks to allow in-depth exploration of these complex issues and robust discussion of almost all the points you mention here as well as many others that came up in our audience and community response.

    You and your readers may have overlooked our radio and web stories on key factors you single out in your post: We did address the proportion of African-Americans who are arrested as a factor in police shootings of black people

    http://projects.scpr.org/officer-involved/stories/black-people-shot-at-disproportionate-rate/

    We also interviewed and heard from police officers, reported on training and explored situations in which police saved lives by shooting armed suspects http://projects.scpr.org/officer-involved/stories/i-see-heroes/

    Your post proves the value of our effort to provide a factual base for such discussion: This was our agenda in compiling the data and going beyond the numbers with in-depth reporting, and we hope your readers will explore the full set of stories, photographs, show segments and other coverage we carried out to look at these issues through many different viewpoints: http://projects.scpr.org/officer-involved

    — Melanie Sill, Vice President for Content, KPCC/ Southern California Public Radio

    • #35
  6. captainpower Inactive
    captainpower
    @captainpower

    cdor: A big question is on them… why are the progressives so intent on dishonoring and deprecating our police that they would go to such lengths to ignore all the good done, all the lives saved, all the sacrifices rendered and instead focus so obviously and blatantly on the tiny percentage of error or even outright wrongdoing?

    I think it’s an extension of the conspiracy theorist’s delusion (I just made that term up).

    If a lone gunman can take out the President of the United States, then nothing is certain in life and the safety of certainty is lost.

    It’s less scary to invent some cabal of powerful hypercompetent men.

    Similarly, it’s more comforting to think that cops are out of control against minorities than it is to think there is a large element of our citizenry that requires violent force to counter.

    • #36
  7. Ball Diamond Ball Member
    Ball Diamond Ball
    @BallDiamondBall

    captainpower:

    cdor: A big question is on them… why are the progressives so intent on dishonoring and deprecating our police that they would go to such lengths to ignore all the good done, all the lives saved, all the sacrifices rendered and instead focus so obviously and blatantly on the tiny percentage of error or even outright wrongdoing?

    I think it’s an extension of the conspiracy theorist’s delusion (I just made that term up).

    If a lone gunman can take out the President of the United States, then nothing is certain in life and the safety of certainty is lost.

    It’s less scary to invent some cabal of powerful hypercompetent men.

    Similarly, it’s more comforting to think that cops are out of control against minorities than it is to think there is a large element of our citizenry that requires violent force to counter.

    I think there’s merit there, but I also believe it’s more tawdry than that in general.  Democrat Gimmetarians smell free stuff.

    • #37
  8. drlorentz Member
    drlorentz
    @drlorentz

    cdor: A big question is on them… why are the progressives so intent on dishonoring and deprecating our police that they would go to such lengths to ignore all the good done

    To be fair to the KPCC staff, they did not ignore the good done. This was part of the series:
    I see heroes (one out of five segments).
    There was some attempt at balance, though it could be viewed cynically as a token attempt.

    On the other hand, the report opens with the following:

    Between Jan. 1, 2010 and Dec. 31, 2014, Los Angeles County district attorney records show at least 375 people were shot by on-duty officers. No officers have been prosecuted for any of those shootings.

    This suggests to the reader that some officers should have been prosecuted just because they shot civilians. In other words, it does implicitly denies the presumption of innocence.

    The treatment of racism is not entirely one-sided. An LAPD Assistant Chief (Moore) and an attorney agree that the statistics are not prima facie evidence of racism:

    Civil rights attorney Connie Rice agreed with Moore: “If most of the contacts by police are with people of color, most of the shootings are going to be with people of color.”

    So it’s a mixed bag: the reporting is somewhat slanted but not as egregiously as claimed in the original post. Mr. Parry, bust them for what they did wrong but exaggerating their misdeeds undermines your case against them.

    • #38
  9. cdor Member
    cdor
    @cdor

    drlorentz, BDB, and captainpower, firstly, I am impressed that KPCC actually responded to Mr. Parry’s article. They even appeared to have read this blog, as they spoke to some of the comments. I followed the first link and noticed immediately that the percentage of  African American people shot was considerably higher per capita than other races. They went on in large bold type for a fairly long time before a reader got to the possible explanation that African Americans are involved in more crime per capita than other races. The Gangsta Lore is perhaps well founded. I am curious about the concept of fear involved in the perception of African American men as being super powerful and thus more dangerous than other races. I think that was thrown out as a concept without any real evidence or data to back it up. Criminals are dangerous, no matter their race. I don’t know that I would feel any more uncomfortable in a holding tank of Mexican Americans, White Supremicists, or African Americans. 

    Speaking of the concept of the left/progressive attitude towards police, some of their “Truth to Power” immaturity is based in rooting for the perceived underdog, I feel certain. In general that is admirable, but specifically and most often it is conspiratorial and unproductive, at best, if not downright destructive at worst. Unfortunately, the latter is most often the reality.

    • #39
  10. Larry Koler Inactive
    Larry Koler
    @LarryKoler

    Robert C. J. Parry:KPCC’s Vice President for Content requested that I post the following reply to my critique, and I shall do so without parsing or comment:


    — Melanie Sill, Vice President for Content, KPCC/ Southern California Public Radio

    First, the only reason for the original post was to raise the Black Lives Matters issues as being important and therefore they let pigs set the agenda.

    Second, this:

    However, you are wrong in your assumptions and declarations about any preset narrative on our part or “cherry-picking” of data — as noted, your arguments all cited facts that were reported in our stories.

    Preset narratives (which is of course all that they do on controversial topics) often have facts and data. It’s how those things are presented that drives the narrative not the facts that they include to cover their derrieres. This is just sophisticated propaganda as opposed to screeds. Public broadcasting is a complete, whole and seamless left wing project.

    How else do you have them recorded giving advise to terrorists. These people are anti-American, they stink and they should be forced to give the money back that they have so misused over the years.

    • #40
  11. Metalheaddoc Member
    Metalheaddoc
    @Metalheaddoc

    Man A pushes an old lady in front of a bus, she dies.

    Man B pushes an old lady out of the way of a bus, she lives.

    Fact: Man A and B push old ladies.

    Context matters. All the facts matter, not just some of the facts. A “narrative” or “story” or “investigation” can be completely supported by the facts if you carefully choose the helpful facts and ignore the inconvenient exculpatory or mitigating facts.

    • #41
  12. Larry Koler Inactive
    Larry Koler
    @LarryKoler

    Metalheaddoc:Man A pushes an old lady in front of a bus, she dies.

    Man B pushes an old lady out of the way of a bus, she lives.

    Fact: Man A and B push old ladies.

    Context matters. All the facts matter, not just some of the facts. A “narrative” or “story” or “investigation” can be completely supported by the facts if you carefully choose the helpful facts and ignore the inconvenient exculpatory or mitigating facts.

    Yes, great example — I first heard this by Mr. Buckley. Is he the author, I wonder?

    Also, he told it this way, too:

    A man who saves an older lady from an attempted murderer who is pushing her into the path of a bus should not be described as a man who pushes little old ladies around.

    And alternatively:

    They should not both be described as men who push little old ladies around.

    He used that analogy many times and it is just a small smidgeon of a notion of the idea that Mr. William F. Buckley, Jr. was a towering genius.

    • #42
  13. drlorentz Member
    drlorentz
    @drlorentz

    captainpower: It’s less scary to invent some cabal of powerful hypercompetent men. Similarly, it’s more comforting to think that cops are out of control against minorities than it is to think there is a large element of our citizenry that requires violent force to counter.

    Interesting point. I’d never thought of that motivation for conspiracy theory. Then again, I never thought too much about what motivates conspiracists. My reaction is almost the reverse: It’s more comforting to imagine a few loose cannons around than an organized cadre (police in this case) trying to get me. If you’re gonna be paranoid, it’s scarier if your enemies are organized.

    • #43
  14. drlorentz Member
    drlorentz
    @drlorentz

    cdor: I followed the first link and noticed immediately that the percentage of African American people shot was considerably higher per capita than other races. They went on in large bold type for a fairly long time before a reader got to the possible explanation that African Americans are involved in more crime per capita than other races.

    No question, the reporting is slanted, i.e., it leans to one side. But it has not totally tipped over. Mr. Parry’s original post was also slanted in the sense that it did not give credit to KPCC for the opposing views they presented. Two wrongs… as they say. For example, Mr Parry claims that it fell to him to call in and point out that greater black crime involvement could explain the data, whereas it was part of the report. This idea may have been downplayed, but Mr. Parry’s statement is a misrepresentation of the facts:

    Robert C. J. Parry: Yet it took a caller to Mantle’s show (me) to ask if maybe – just maybe – blacks are disproportionately killed by cops because cop-killers are vastly disproportionately black.

    Mr. Parry also had a narrative and selected the parts of the report that fit his own narrative. He focused on the parts that agreed with his expectations. It’s human nature, also known as confirmation bias. I initially had a similar reaction. Everyone must be vigilant to avoid such pitfalls. To his credit, Mr. Parry posted KPCC’s response.

    • #44
  15. Metalheaddoc Member
    Metalheaddoc
    @Metalheaddoc

    Larry Koler:

    Metalheaddoc:Man A pushes an old lady in front of a bus, she dies.

    Man B pushes an old lady out of the way of a bus, she lives.

    Fact: Man A and B push old ladies.

    Context matters. All the facts matter, not just some of the facts. A “narrative” or “story” or “investigation” can be completely supported by the facts if you carefully choose the helpful facts and ignore the inconvenient exculpatory or mitigating facts.

    Yes, great example — I first heard this by Mr. Buckley. Is he the author, I wonder?

    Also, he told it this way, too:

    A man who saves an older lady from an attempted murderer who is pushing her into the path of a bus should not be described as a man who pushes little old ladies around.

    And alternatively:

    They should not both be described as men who push little old ladies around.

    He used that analogy many times and it is just a small smidgeon of a notion of the idea that Mr. William F. Buckley, Jr. was a towering genius.

    I knew I heard that story somewhere, but I couldn’t remember where.

    • #45
  16. Man With the Axe Inactive
    Man With the Axe
    @ManWiththeAxe

    On a lighter note, in the movie “Naked Gun” police Lieutenant Frank Drebbin is suspended from police squad. He comments, as he clears out his desk, “The next time I shoot someone I could be prosecuted.”

    • #46
Become a member to join the conversation. Or sign in if you're already a member.