Brendan Calling

The Daily News Misses the Mark

After listening to residents criticize his department at a community meeting, Johnson asked why no one immediately came forward when 4-year-old Nashay Little was shot, or when 10-year-old Faheem Thomas-Childs was killed. But when police shoot someone, witnesses are plentiful.”

The Daily News misses its target, and in a big way with this unsigned editorial.

“Johnson” of course is our hapless (and practically sedated) police commissioner. A week or so ago, seven of his police fired 85 bullets at a man waving a gun. Sixty-five of those bullets missed their mark. The police involved are in a bit of trouble for using an absurd amount of force, and the community, who knew the victim well, is angry.

The reason people didn’t step forward when Nashay Little or Faheem Thomas got shot is because they knew that if they DID step forward, the odds are high that the killer will be back on the street quickly thanks to our overworked and poorly run DA’s office, thanks to federal cuts that took 400 community-based police off the streets, and police who don’t come when you call.

Shooting between civilians DO trigger the “same righteous anger and eyewitness recall as do those that involve cops”: it’s simply that people are afraid to step forward in criminal cases because they believe (accurately) that they will not be protected if they step up to their civic responsibilities: how many times in the past few years have Philadelphians read about the friends and colleagues fellow gang-members of criminals coming back to terrorize, intimidate, and murder witnesses?

In contrast, when it’s a police shooting, the community doesn’t fear the police coming back to the neighborhood later to murder the witnesses. So they step forward.

If the system supported witnesses, witnesses would support the system. It’s really that simple, and the Daily News doesn’t take that into account.

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