Internal Investigation Following an Officer-Involved Shooting (Part I)

Most people have heard the phrase “if it bleeds, it leads” — a reference to the hierarchy of news programming, most often on television, and to fear-based programming in particular. The idea is to grab the viewer’s attention, stroke their anxieties, and sell them on the suggestion that they need to watch the news story in order to get the information they need to resolve their fear. "Tonight at six: the toxin found in YOUR air conditioner. Could it be making you sick?" Dunno. Better watch and find out!

The success of such programming relies on a number of unfortunate tactics. They are unfortunate because they focus on kindling emotion rather than conveying information.

Those tactics include:

-Presenting dramatic anecdotes instead of scientific evidence
-Suggesting that isolated events are trends
-Promoting fatalistic thinking
-Pushing simplistic generalizations as universal truths,
-Relegating fact-checking to the back-burner...
-While placing corrections out of sight, and - critically -
-Not going beyond the surface in news reporting.

Why am I bringing this up? I’ll tell you one thing: I have no interest in sparking conversation about so-called "fake news” and I am not trying to criticize broadcast news. Rather, I am bringing this up to explain why, when you hear about an officer-involved shooting on TV, you never hear about the officer's experience.

What was going through their mind? Why did they shoot? What emotions did they feel at various times throughout the incident? Who are they as a person?

None of those answers are likely to accomplish any of the goals of fear-based programming. So the questions don't get asked, and it doesn't get programmed.

This is the first video in a short series which will be taking a deeper-than-usual dive into one or more officer-involved shootings. Rather than start off with video of the incident itself, we will begin by viewing the officer interview portion of the internal investigation into the OIS. You will hear from officers who speak candidly about what they were seeing, hearing, thinking, and feeling throughout the event.

After which you will see the incident footage.

Let’s see how it goes.