You probably didn’t see this, judging by how little response I received.
But The Ledger dedicated essentially its entire Saturday editorial to me and my ongoing writing about how police deploy state power. I assume that Ledger Editorial Editor Bill Thompson, whom I have never met, wrote the piece.
The first half went on and on trying to establish that police officers are suffering at the hands of the bad people who say mean things about them when they’re caught on camera abusing the public. And it claimed there are really bad people out there celebrating police deaths with offensive chanting.
In the second half of the editorial, Thompson used that set up to say that I am one of these bad and really bad people. It did so by quoting three sentences/phrases from the thousands and thousands of words I’ve written about police and state power, either here at Lakeland Local or on social media.
Here’s how the comparison worked:
That has fed some ugly and corrosive rhetoric over the past 13 months, as was on display after the execution-style shooting of Deputy Darren Goforth near Houston. Some Black Lives Matter protesters chanted “pigs in a blanket, fry ‘em like bacon” during a demonstration outside the Minnesota State Fair.
Yet we don’t have to travel that far to find such examples. We have one here in Polk County.
Billy Townsend, a local blogger from Lakeland, recently used his cyber platform to criticize the Lakeland Police Department for its handling of a fatal stabbing in Townsend’s neighborhood last month.
And here is the content that makes me the equivalent of the “fry ’em like bacon” people.
Townsend raised many sound points that Chief Larry Giddens would be wise to consider. But his tone undermines his argument. For instance, he wrote that he did not want to get “shot in front of my kid because I bypassed a pointless police road block and went to my house by driving the wrong way.” “In a country where police celebrate and emphasize their violent responses to any non-compliance, citizens must actively consider how our actions — no matter their innocence — will look to officers.” Recalling a different case in his neighborhood, Townsend lambasted a contingent of LPD officers and DEA agents as a “Delta Force dress up unit,” a “pointless army of dudebros showing off their tats and tank” and a “gang of frat boys with guns deploying their retractable penises without warning.”
Even after senior LPD officials agreed to work with Townsend on the issues he raised, he struck again. On social media he reposted an LPD picture of officers in riot gear with the caption: “We’re here to protect you, not bust your heads. Riggghhhht.”
One note on the last point. LPD itself disliked the message that the frowning, snarling SWAT team picture atop its Facebook page conveyed to the public. Much to their credit, they took it down. When that happened, I immediately unposted my picture and took down all comments as a gesture of good faith. I’ve really had nothing but good things to say about LPD since that incident, which happened a couple weeks ago, I think. But of course, knowing that would have required some reporting. And I’m sure somebody just fed Bill some quotes.
In truth, I was surprised by this prominent mention — and immediately got excited about the chance of writing a response op-ed for The Ledger. I emailed Thompson, Publisher Kevin Drake, and Executive Editor Lenore Devore on Saturday to tell them I was writing a piece. And I submitted it Sunday morning by email. I’ve crossed swords with Lenore and Kevin at times; but I’ve also had pleasant meetings with them. So I started from an optimistic place.
My response contains well researched data on prohibition, crime, police deaths, and history. It has information that Ledger readers will rarely, if ever, see in their newspaper. And while I was not angered by the silly accusation against me, I did see it as carrying a certain entitlement. Basically, if you call somebody a cop-killer lover in print, without ever contacting that person, fairness would seem to dictate that the accused cop-killer lover get to respond pretty thoroughly and pretty rapidly.
That’s what I said to Bill, Kevin, and Lenore in my Sunday morning email. And again on Monday morning. Not one of them replied to my emails, or even acknowledged receipt. I did run into Lenore at the gym on Sunday. When I asked her if she had seen my notes, she said no, she’d been busy all weekend. I pestered Kevin via Facebook message, and he said to talk to Bill.
Finally, after tweeting Bill on Tuesday morning, I got a response from him via email. You can read it below, as well as my reply.
Billy, sorry for the delayed response. Kevin is out of town until later this week and so the earliest the ed board could consider and discuss your proposed op-ed would be next Monday. We appreciate your patience, and we’ll be in touch soon. Thanks
To which I responded:
I’m not sure what there is to consider and discuss.
You wrote this about me:
“That has fed some ugly and corrosive rhetoric over the past 13 months, as was on display after the execution-style shooting of Deputy Darren Goforth near Houston. Some Black Lives Matter protesters chanted “pigs in a blanket, fry ‘em like bacon” during a demonstration outside the Minnesota State Fair.
Yet we don’t have to travel that far to find such examples. We have one here in Polk County.”
You are welcome to explain how anything I’ve ever written compares directly to people chanting in celebration of a police officer being killed, if that even happened. Certainly nothing you quoted from me remotely equates to such an example.
I won’t ever write anything that gets a comparison that explosive so wrong. But if I did ever write anything like that about you or Kevin or Lenore, even if I was right, you would have the opportunity to respond immediately and with unlimited space. I do not throw sucker punches and hide.
If your bureaucratic machinery is too creaky to keep up with the intensity of your slurs, you should probably confine yourself to writing nice things about business leaders. I, of course, have my own timetables and platform, as you noted. And I’ll be thinking over how to respond there, as well.
I still expect my piece to run, unedited, at a very near date. If there are questions about sources, I’ll be happy to answer them.
And it’s a pleasure to meet you, virtually.
Look, this isn’t a big deal. I have received not one hint of angry feedback in response to Thompson’s piece. No one read it. Or no one cared. As petty incitement, it’s proven impotent. The only comments on it are supportive of me; but that doesn’t mean anything either.
The whole thing only matters to me in that a really well researched piece of content that suggests a tangible way out of this endless back and forth between police and critics is sitting in multiple Ledger in-boxes. It’s not going to change the world; but it would give handful of Ledger readers a look at something they probably haven’t seen before. It has a lot of stuff the LL readers have seen before. And some newer stuff. I’ll run it here if The Ledger doesn’t. But it would be nice if The Ledger, as an institution, pretended to care about anything it kinda pretends to care about. We’ll see. I’m not very hopeful.
Let’s be honest about The Ledger as institution. It’s not a newspaper anymore; it’s a hypodermic needle. Its hedge fund owner jams it into the body of Polk County so it can suck out a little bit of spare change.
So let’s take a moment to sympathize with the men and women there trying to do the right thing. Maybe it’s because it’s a buyer’s market, but The Ledger has a lot of really good, conscientious young and older reporters and employees trying to perform a mission the institution is at best indifferent to. In some cases, they’re doing work as good as anything The Ledger has ever produced. I do not want to name them because I don’t want to harm them. And that says something in its own right.
I respect these people. I root for them. And I hurt for them. Indeed, The Ledger is losing the smartest, most capable, most decent person who ever worked there. Chuck McDanal deserves a much better institution. And I hope he finds it.
So that’s why I won’t cancel my subscription. It’s a gesture of support for people doing actual good work in terrible conditions. Don’t spend a second worrying about me. Just try to separate them and their mission from the institution they’re shackled to. And hope my praising them doesn’t make their situation more miserable.