Aiyana Stanley-Jones, South Philadelphia High, and Solving the News Problem
Bharat’s quote – “Why is it that a thousand people come up with approximately the same reading of matters? Why couldn’t there be five readings? And meanwhile use that energy to observe something else, equally important, that is currently being neglected.” – is highly important when we discuss the problems with discussing issues of grave importance. The reality of the current news model is that major stories are being neglected. When I ran a search for Aiyanna Stanely-Jones on the Washington Post website, a total of six articles were returned. Five were republished or summarized from the AP. One was a television column by Lisa de Moraes, on the influence of the television crew at the scene, and looking at the crime through a “what does this mean for reality tv?” perspective. Over at the New York Times, there was one reported piece focusing on the use of the flash grenade and the influence of cameras on police reaction, and an op-ed. Op-ed author Charles M. Blow sparked a conversation around the fall of Detroit, as a city. But it is only in alternate spaces where Aiyana Stanley-Jones’ death is put in the context of the larger picture.
The blog over at the Center for Investigative Reporting has a great piece up about the new reality of police raids:
A house raid by law enforcement in Michigan that led to the killing of a 7-year-old girl May 16 sheds new light on the question of whether police have become overly militarized in the post-Sept. 11 age of terrorism. The Detroit Police Department was executing a “no-knock” search warrant intending to nab an alleged murderer with the help of its SWAT team when authorities say Aiyana Jones was accidentally shot by one of the officers. [...]
The show’s website features images of Detroit’s special response team dressed in military-style apparel and carrying sub-machine guns capable of spraying 800 rounds per minute. One officer wields an intimidating, large-barreled “multi-launcher,” which fires tear-gas projectiles “to disorient potential threats” and “less-lethal rounds,” such as sand bags that are used for crowd-control situations.[...]
Police departments across the United States have used federal homeland security grants to equip these teams with armored vehicles, battering rams, modern devices for conducting surveillance, incident-command trucks resembling RVs on steroids and SWAT attire that seems to visually transform local police into the armed forces.
In one area of Hawaii, police use a 19,000-pound armored BearCat purchased with $240,000 in grants “mostly for executing high-risk search warrants,” according to the Honolulu Star-Bulletin. The vehicle has detectors on board for radiation and methane gas, and it’s followed on “missions” by a $330,000 mobile-command post.
New Hampshire spent $378,000 for two armored vehicles, and police in the town of Nashua there acquired a $250,000 mobile-command unit. Hidalgo County in southern Texas used federal cash set aside by lawmakers for border security to snap up a $346,000 “ballistic engineered armored response” vehicle, according to grant records Elevated Risk obtained this year.
Kimora Lee Simmons (yes, that Kimora Lee) took to the blog at Global Grind to air her frustration:
As the family has said, and I agree, the officer who shot Aiyana is not a “monster”. I do not believe that his actions were intentional, but the slapdash techniques with which these kinds of raids are executed concerns me.
We have militarized our police force, and in doing so, created a war between those who are suppose to protect AND serve our communities with the men, women and children that live in them! We break down doors in our own neighborhoods, the way we break down doors in Baghdad or Kabul. We treat our very own citizens as if they are on the other side. We have lost the connection we once had with our police force. We are afraid of them and they are afraid of us!
Adrienne Brown provides a guest post on the Global Grind, with similar sentiments:
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