This kind of journalism goes well beyond unethical to near evil.
Here are the bare facts about the death of 26-year-old Dexter Reed on March 21, 2024, after his car was pulled over by Chicago police. He had been arrested on July 13, 2023 and charged with felony aggravated unlawful use of a weapon. Reed had also been arrested on April 20, 2023 and charged with retail theft. After Reed was stopped on March 21 of this year, he refused to obey officers’ commands, and then started shooting. One shot wounded a Chicago police officer. Four officers returned fire, and Reed died in the exchange.
Now here is how the Washington Post began telling the story, in reports this week with these headlines: “Videos show Chicago police fired nearly 100 shots over 41 seconds during fatal traffic stop,” and “Police fire 96 shots in 41 seconds, killing Black man during traffic stop.”
“Dexter Reed’s mother remembers the last time she saw her son alive. “Mom, I’m going for a ride,” he told her, before heading out in the car that he had purchased just three days earlier. Reed, 26, was killed that same day, when tactical-unit police officers fired 96 bullets at him within 41 seconds, according to Chicago’s Civilian Office of Police Accountability, or COPA, which investigates allegations of police misconduct and police shootings. “He was just riding around in his car,” Dexter’s mother, Nicole Banks, told Fox 32 Chicago on Tuesday, as she broke down in tears. “They killed him.”
They killed hm after her darling boy shot his gun at police. Never mind: both Post stories make the police response the real news. Police are trained to shoot at an armed and shooting suspect until he is down. The number of shots is irrelevant, or should be, but the Post’s motive is to ramp up community fear and hatred of police. The Post, as with all of the news media with Mike Brown’s fictionalized death (“Hands up! Don’t shoot!”), portrayed the dead felon as a vibrant young man with hopes and dreams, part of a loving family whose members “remember the young man as a talented high school basketball player with ambitions of being a sports broadcaster.” “I really can’t explain the pain that me and my family is going through, but I just hope there are people out there who understand he was a son, he was a brother, he was an uncle, he had loved ones,” Reed’s sister, Porscha Banks, is quoted as telling reporters. “He was somebody very important.”
Somebody very important who initiated a gun battle with law enforcement officers. After the third paragraph in one of the stories, that little detail is long forgotten. In the other, we hear from Chicago’s atrocious mayor, Brandon Johnson, as he shifted into full Black Lives Matter-pandering mode. “As mayor and as a father, raising a family, including two Black boys on the West Side of Chicago,” he said, “I’m personally devastated to see yet another young Black man lose his life during an interaction with police.”
“Interaction.” Here’s how that stops happening, Mayor: teach black men not to commit crimes, to obey lawful police orders, to quit resisting arrest and most of all, to avoid shooting guns at police officers. Why is that so hard?
The cop shot by Reed is black, incidentally.
The Post report authored by Jennifer Hassan concludes,
Reed’s death has once again reignited debate and anger over police brutality and excessive use of force in the United States, prompting protests outside a Chicago police station this week, with activists, residents and family members calling for justice.
There have been at least 9,497 fatal police shootings in the United States since 2015, according to The Post’s database. In the past 12 months, at least 1,116 people have been shot and killed by police.
Police killings of Black Americans including Tyre Nichols, Breonna Taylor and George Floyd have prompted protests and a racial reckoning that translated into hundreds of bills aimed at curtailing law enforcement powers and reshaping policing.
“How many more young Black and Brown men need to die before this city will change?” [the Reed family’s lawyer said as he seeks millions of dollars in damages from Chicago for police gunning down a felon who started shooting first.]
Yeah, that bracketed part was mine, but it is completely accurate.
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that the majority of reader comments on the two articles vilify the police. The Post knows its audience. And after all, who wouldn’t sympathize with this good lad in the photo used to introduce both Post articles?
Ethics Alarms 
Every Chicago police officer needs to walk off the job until Brandon Johnson has the balls to say if you fire a weapon at a police officer expect all officers to shoot back at you until you are no longer moving.
I would recommend the officer that got shot sue the family of Reed for the emotional trauma their son inflicted on that officer. If we can jail parents for facilitating the criminal behavior of their child then we should be able to hold them liable for the civil costs of that behavior as well.
Enemies of the people. That is all.
The graduation picture shows him caressing the baby bump of the woman to his left. Is that his baby momma?
Yeah, I wondered about that as well. Impregnating women without having any intention of marrying them is not considered evidence that someone is not a wonderful lad in some cultures…in fact, often the opposite. For that matter, shooting at police and getting arrested for felonies isn’t such evidence either…
Well, Dexter Reed was a pillar of the community, getting over $20,000 in PPP loans that were later forgiven. I’m sure the community will miss his thriving small business.
Now tha the sarcasm is over, I don’t have a problem with the fact that they shot him and he died. I do have a problem with the number of rounds fired, or more accurately, how they were fired. What I saw was panic fire mag dumping. This is a densely populated area. This is not the place to throw stray rounds everywhere. They are lucky they didn’t kill some random residents. I understand the initial panic fire when from the officer right by the car, they were surprised and they wanted to suppress any returning fire while they moved to cover. However, once the officers retreated to concealment/cover, the shots should have been slower, aimed shots. I will retract my criticism if I find that Reed was shot at least 30 times. Let’s look at the ‘acorn’ cops. They fired at least 20 rounds while the ‘wounded’ officer was dragging himself to cover. Once both officers reached cover, however, they stopped firing. Not ONE of those rounds hit the suspect because they were panic fire. Many of them went sailing into the neighborhood.
This is a common problem in police shootings. When NYC used to keep track, they found that the average shots fired before the suspect was hit was 2-3 and the average number of shots fired was just under 6. This is because the officers had 5 or 6 shot revolvers. In other words, they fired until the gun went ‘click’. When they moved to 17-shot semi-autos, the number of rounds before the first hit went to 7 and the average number of rounds fired per officer went to 17. They fired until the slide locked back. They stopped tracking this after 2 years of semi-autos. Officers were dumping 17 rounds inside apartment complex stairwells.
As a citizen, I am responsible for every bullet that leaves my gun. As a taxpayer, I am responsible for every bullet that leaves the gun of a police officer.
Agreed. But nonetheless, the lede should not be excessive firing by police, which is being used to shift blame and accountability.
No, but the poor training of police in such situations has been a pet peeve of mine for awhile. I see some evidence that police are being trained to empty the gun for ‘officer safety’. ’Officer safety’ seems to have become a serious civil rights issue. If they had a separate article on the number of shots fired, without delving into the issue of the suspect, I would have no problem with that. Something along the lines of
“Why are so many rounds fired in police shootings? Should police training be changed?”