BY JOEL THURTELL
Police unions are taking the rap for defending lawbreaking cops.
Police chiefs argue that they are powerless to fire bad cops.
There was a time when top cops openly made the case for protecting bad police officers.
For my recent class on investigative reporting at Wayne State University, I assigned students to read an op-ed column I wrote for the South Bend Tribune in 1981.
Thirty-seven years ago, a black police chief and a white sheriff agreed that laws should be waived for lawbreaking cops. Both made the case aggressively and without apology of any kind.
However, we would never haveknown about the drunk Berrien County sheriff’s captain racing along a Cass County street blazing away with his pistol had not South Bend Tribune reporter Lyle Sumerix picked up police chatter on a police scanner. Lyle called me. I checked with the Case sheriff. No press release. But the sheriff admitted the incident happened.
Our Zoom class discussion was based on this reading:
Equal justice under law doesn’t apply to police in Cass County SBT by JT 12-29-1981-1-1
Our discussion focused on these questions:
Why did this item run opposite the editorial page of the South Bend Tribune. Why was it not a news story?
How does this “Michigan Point of View” piece differ from a news report?
Could this story have been published as a news story?
What changes would it need to be a news story?
The original police incidents took place October 31 and November 9, in 1981. Can you speculate why it took nearly two months for this story to appear?
Did the sheriff issue a press release about the Berrien cop’s offenses?
How did reporters learn about the Berrien County officer’s offense?
How did reporters learn about the charges against the Cass County men?
Would the public ever have learned about the Berrien officer’s shooting spree from Cass County police?
Were the alleged offenses similar?
What is the police privilege claimed by the Cass County sheriff and Cassopolis police chief?
Is there a legal basis for the police privilege?
Would a regular news report compare cases in the way that this article does?
The Tribune op-ed makes two comparisons:
1) It compares police treatment of the Berrien deputy with the way police treated two non-police citizens arrested for similar firearms offenses.
2) It compares police treatment of a South Bend police officer’s one-car crash with the unequal treatment of the Berrien deputy.
Does the second Cass County case of unequal treatment of police reinforce the writer’s assertion that “equality is absent in Cass County”?
Is that a correct statement?
How might a reporter or other researcher reinforce that assertion?
What additional information would be needed to make such a generalization immune to rebuttal?
