Most readers here are by now painfully familiar with how miserable mainstream media reporting on police shootings of criminals can be.
That said, the Associated Press's headline writers and reporter Lindsay Whitehurst have lowered the bar even further in their coverage of the shooting of a 17 year-old who was beating a man "near a homeless shelter" in Salt Lake City, Utah.
The 17 year-old police shot, Abdullah (Abdi) Mohamed, has been in the U.S. since his family fled to the U.S. from Somalia in 2004. Thus, he has spent over two-thirds of his life here. He has a criminal record going back five years. Some of it is violent.
With that background, let's see how the AP and Whitehurst covered the shooting (HT Pamela Geller; bolds and numbered tags are mine):
Refugee shot by Salt Lake City police fled violence, squalor in search of a ‘better life’
Somali refugee Abdullahi Mohamed — critically wounded in a high-profile police shooting in Salt Lake City last month — fled to the U.S. from a refugee camp, [1] where food was scarce, scorpions scurried everywhere and a toilet was a hole in the ground.
... But things took a turn and he began to get in trouble with police, cousin Muslima Aden said, after his beloved grandfather suffered a brain injury in a car accident.
... In a city that’s home to the headquarters for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, their Muslim faith stood out. Aden remembers classmates staring at her when the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks came up in school. [2]
... Mohamed’s life took a detour, Aden said, after the accident left his grandfather, who was a father figure, unable to remember his grandchildren.
Mohamed started getting in trouble with police at age 12, according to court records. He spent time in juvenile detention centers for theft, trespass and assault, most recently in September. [3]
None of that prepared his family for the news that he had been shot by police.
Police say Mohamed and a second person were beating a man with metal sticks [4] when officers intervened Feb. 27. The officers fired after Mohamed moved toward the beaten man instead of immediately obeying a command to drop the stick, police said. [5]
... But Aden said she’s heard a different version from friends who were at the scene. [6] She said that the man said something that started an argument, and the two were preparing to fight with halves of a broomstick that Mohamed broke when police arrived.
Her cousin’s friend Selam Mohammad has said she called his name at the same time the officer shouted for him to drop the stick, so he didn’t hear the command.
Notes:
[1] — It's as if a five year-old decided on his own to flee with his family. What's far more relevant is that Abdullahi Mohamed has experienced a relatively good existence in the U.S. for over two-thirds of his life, and has chosen to engage in criminal behavior.
[2] — This is a clear attempt to drag religion, alleged religious discrimination and race into an incident where there is no evidence of direct bearing.
[3] — Once you cross into assault, it isn't about someone getting into "trouble" any more. It's about someone involved in a violent crime.
[4] — The AP report never says that the attack took place near a homeless shelter. Additionally, the victim's condition, after being beaten with metal sticks, and his age aren't important enough to communicate to readers.
[5] — If the incident went down as the police say it did, the sad reality is that ignoring an order from law enforcement and attempting to continue assaulting a victim opens one up to being shot. Police have a responsibility to protect victims in these circumstances, as striking someone with a "metal stick" could kill or permanently injure the target.
[6] — Isn't it interesting how a "different version" that has been "heard" by someone who clearly wasn't an eyewitness gets equal billing with what the Salt Lake City police are saying in their official capacity about the incident?
It appears that the AP, which has posted at least eight related stories at its "Big Story" web site in the past two weeks, has been trying to turn this unfortunate incident, which occurred on February 26, into a sensationalized national cause.
In its latest report, AP tells us that Mohamed "woke up from his medically induced coma but remains on painkillers" on Monday.
While that story is at the AP's main national site, it is not at the wire service's "Big Story" site, where dispatches deemed worthy of being permanently available also appear. How odd. It's almost as if AP is saying, "Darn it, he's not going to die, so it's not that important any more."
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
