The other day, Rick Horowitz sent me a link to series of twits that were purportedly sent by a woman named Robyn Swirling, and then aggregated on Storify. They told a disturbing story of a child punched by a D.C. cop, and a woman who came to the child’s aid being arrested.
Rick asked what I thought of this. My response was fairly unsatisfying. I didn’t know what to think of this. Without knowing the person who was reporting the conduct, without some verification that this wasn’t some gag or joke or retaliation, or that her account wasn’t hacked, I couldn’t begin to know what to think of this.
It certainly seems to be legit, and flowed as if it was happening in front of her, but it lacked a great deal of detail, not the least of which was what precipitated the first thing she saw, the officer hitting the child. Was it a child, as in a five-year-old, or a child as in a 16-year-old standing 6’2″? Did the child punch the officer or was the kid walking down the street, minding his own business, when the cop sucker punched him?
It’s not that I’m attempting to make any judgments to suggest that what the cop did, if the cop actually did anything, was justified, but that it’s irresponsible to write about something without at least a basic grasp of the facts and a basis to believe the information is reliable.
This points out some fundamental flaws with social media as a source of information upon which we can rely and should republish. The New York Times magazine last Sunday had a lengthy piece about how the mistaken identification of Brown University student Sunil Tripathi wound its way from the crowdsourced speculation on Reddit to being reported from putatively legitimate media outlets as if it was fact. It was a damning article about how the rush to be first blinds us to the need to be accurate. It’s unacceptable, and potentially very harmful, to just repeat nonsense because it’s there to be repeated.
In reading the twits, the meme “without pictures, it didn’t happen” came to mind. Had there been a video of the event, it would speak for itself. It wouldn’t require a judgment call on whether to trust the twits of some person unknown to us. It wouldn’t test our fortitude to put accuracy ahead of sensationalism. After all, this is exactly the sort of story that would be worthwhile publishing on a blawg of this sort, and the pull is strong to believe it because it’s consistent with what is done here regularly. But only if it’s true.
The other issue that struck me is that this information was transmitted via twitter, a remarkably good source for the fast distribution of information, and similarly remarkable for its inability to distribute information in detail. It’s likely that this was the medium available at the moment, and so it was used. But at the same time, there are many questions, many details, that might have provided a far better picture of what happened had the writer put it together in a medium more suited to telling a fuller story afterward. Instead, she put her twits together on Storify, adding no information to the very limited offering of the twits.
If this happened, and if there was nothing more to the story than appears from the twits, then it would be information worth publishing, spreading, so others would learn of it and come to appreciate how a D.C. cop, identified by badge number, had done some very bad things. It would be a valuable story about the other cops who let this happen and refused to uphold the law when it came to a brother cop. Her final twit, her takeaway, is one the would be very worthy of spreading:
That was (one of) the most important takeaway from this event: as citizens, we MUST watch our police, fellow decent officers can’t/won’t
Instead, I’m constrained to mention what may or may not have happened only peripherally, because I can’t repeat this in the absence of any basis to be sure that it’s true and in the absence of the details that would provide a fully fleshed-out story.
So my answer to Rick is that I don’t know what to think about what happened, but I think it’s a shame that it may have happened and yet it’s not something I can responsibly write about. That would be a terrible waste.
Update: A belated email arrived from Robin Swirling informing me that since she was named in this post, she was entitled to dictate what was said about her, and I was “irresponsible” for not contacting her to verify the truth of her twits (which, she also informed me, were “tweets” and not “twits.”
Despite my better judgment and Bennett’s First Rule, I responded that she misunderstood the post (which wasn’t really about her at all) and needed to “curb her narcissism.” She replied that I was an “unpleasant person” and that her effort at a “fruitful” engagement was wasted.
Not only does this prove the point of the post, that one can never trust social media on its face, because “on the internet, no one knows you’re a dog,” but no matter what pathologies Swirling suffers, they sell keyboards to anyone, regardless of intelligence or sanity. Just because someone said so on social media does not make it so.
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The second half of a Robert Kennedy quote is “We get the kind of law enforcment we insist on.” It appears to me that many communities insist on order and they are not very concerned about justice for others which leads back to the first part of the quote “We get the kind of goverment we deserve.”
Do the elected officials that are supposed to oversee the police think that is part of their job?
If they do are they trained to do so?
In my community the answer to both questions is no.
I think we need some type of citizen law enforcment review commision that has a county or district jurisdiction where the members of the commision are trained to do the job.
First, this isn’t a post about what a cop did wrong. I thought that was clear. Second, you miss a critical piece of the puzzle: the concern you have over the manner in which police do their job is because you’ve chosen, for whatever reason, to pay attention to abuse. Most people don’t. They neither care nor recognize it until it touches them. Until then, their concern for their safety and the safety of their families far outweighs their concern for police misconduct and the violation of civil rights.
So is the answer to create yet another citizen commission made up of respected members of the community? They will give the cops medals for keeping them safe.
I guess I was unclear my main point is that if there is to be effective citizen oversight of the police the people doing the oversight have to be trained.
While you were unclear, your subsequent clarity isn’t helping much. First, your comment still has nothing to do with the point of the post, and second, it’s exceptionally naïve. I would think you’ve figured out by now that it’s just not that simple.
I wouldn’t say your response was unsatisfying. (I think I responded by saying “good point,” and that I wasn’t going to blog it.)
I tried to confirm it through other means, short of calling the police to ask, but was unable to do so, confirming for me the decision not to blog about it. Interestingly, I briefly considered a cautionary post similar to (though certainly not as good as) what you posted here.
It is a reminder that just because a story is believable, that doesn’t make it true. If we jump automagically to conclusions without further investigation, well…
…that would make us like cops.
My response was unsatisfying to me, even if not you. I want to know. It pisses me off to think there is something happening that seems worthwhile to write about, but I can’t. That is unsatisfying, at least to me.
Apparently, they have started a departmental investigation. So, we will know more one way or other soon. When there are no pics or extensive injuries – what is the best way for an ordinary citizen to draw attention. If the intention is to kickstart an investigation by the media or police – twitter seems to be as decent bet.
Or we won’t know any more one way or another soon. And one time hardly makes twitter a decent bet. You’ve let assumptions run rampant. This you cannot do.
Twitter is a decent bet only considering the alternatives. What would you have her do? File a complaint to internal affairs? Find some counsel? – she is a third party. Why won’t we know something more – I expect it will be similar to what is found in many such departmental investigations – but it is still something.
“What would you have her do” is not an argument in favor of twitter, any more than a single instance of twitter use resulting in a potential investigation is evidence of it being a good bet. You left one well-intended but baseless comment, and now compound it for no apparent reason. If you insist on pursuing it, you would do better to do so elsewhere. Twitter, perhaps.
Wise words. Too many people jump on a story these days without verification; especially when it fits their own biases.
This is worse and more rampant with Twitter, etc., but even the “mainstream” media all too often gets things wrong and/or leaves too many obvious questions left unasked. Lack of critical thinking, even in the press where it should be strong.
That was made abundantly clear in the NYT Mag article about Reddit, where baseless crowdsourced speculation took on a life of its own and morphed into fact in the mainstream media, while no one bothered to ascertain if there was any truth to it at all. Twitter is a great source of quick information. Whether it’s a good source of accurate information is a very different matter.