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Late last week, former Mayor Gow Fields copied me on an email he sent to Ledger Publisher Kevin Drake and virtually everyone even loosely affiliated with I-4 corridor media. It contained a police report from 2013 that someone had sent to Fields, along with an anonymous note.
Bottom line: Back in 2013, Ledger Executive Editor Lenore Devore asked for and received special attention from the Lakeland Police Department, specifically Assistant Chief Mike Link.
Now, as special treatment goes, it was quite minor. Devore thought someone may have broken into her house on two occasions and left peculiar signs of activity as an act of intimidation. It’s worth noting for context that this happened while The Ledger was reporting heavily on LPD scandals.
After the second time, Devore decided to report it to police. Rather than call 9-1-1 or the non-emergency LPD number, Devore called Assistant Chief Mike Link directly. Link, in turn, ordered then captain Vic White to send an investigator to Devore’s place of work at The Ledger.
Let’s recap: in response to some unexplained, uneasy happenings at her home, Devore used her relationship with a top LPD official to access an assistant chief directly. Link expedited a response and directed it to her place of work. At no time does the report indicate that Devore sought to go through normal channels to get LPD to respond. This is special treatment.
It’s also not earth-shattering. It’s the type of bureaucratic navigation that people do when they know people within organizations. I feel certain Devore did not think of herself as pursuing special treatment when she did it. I feel certain Link did not think of himself as ordering special treatment. We should not overstate what happened here.
HOWEVER. There’s a big however.
Just a couple weeks ago, Devore’s Ledger ran a story about Lakeland City Commissioner Phillip Walker calling LPD Chief Larry Giddens directly after a car crash. Giddens then directed Walker to the normal channels of requesting service. And that’s pretty much it.
The Ledger apparently considered the call itself enough of an assumption of special status from Walker to write a story about it. And by all accounts I’ve heard, Devore was the driving force in publishing this story. She insisted on it.
So to recap again:
1) Walker makes possibly, mildly inappropriate phone call to police chief, but receives no special treatment = story pushed by Devore.
2) Devore makes possibly, mildly inappropriate phone call to assistant police chief, and actually receives special treatment = not a story.
I tried to get a comment from Devore and Drake about this. They ignored my request, just like they and editorial writer Bill Thompson have ignored multiple email and phone messages (probably more than 10) from me concerning my response to the editorial Thompson wrote attacking my police writing a few weeks ago.
Here’s how the anonymous writer put it in his/her note to Gow Fields.
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“We believe a double standard exists in Ledger reporting. Compare the article written about the car accident that Commissioner Walker was in with the LPD report on Lenore Devore’s suspicious incident.
“They make it seem as though he got special treatment. Based on the article and LPD report they got similar treatment. There was no article on Lenore Devore though. Why is that? Are they trying to hurt Commissioner Walker?”
I actually think they’re trying to hurt the police chief, but Walker is a bonus, I guess.
Journalists are public figures, just like bloggers, police chiefs, and politicians
Isn’t Walker a public official and Devore not? Would that explain or justify the double standard.?
No. As The Ledger so elegantly pointed out in recently devoting an entire editorial to criticizing my writing about police, writers/commentators/journalists are public figures. Bill Thompson even quoted my Facebook page in attacking me. I totally accept that.
But so should newspaper executive editors. You’re a public power figure in that position. You get written about. You get scrutiny. Period. If a Ledger reporter gets arrested, the status of reporter makes the arrest a story. So if a public official doing a thing is a Ledger story, so is the executive editor doing the exact same thing, except moreso.
If you’re wondering, I wouldn’t have run either story, as an editor. That’s how minor the special treatment is. It’s de minimis on both counts.
Ledger leadership attacking a police chief acting in good faith
The real story here, what’s really intriguing, is the leak battle at LPD.
It’s fascinating that the executive editor of the local mainstream “journalism” institution has clearly taken a side against the current police chief, based on nothing I can see but personal distaste. And it’s not the first time Devore has used The Ledger as the vehicle for her personal gratification. See this post.
Let me say this about Chief Giddens, whom I have only met recently: he was second-in-command to former Chief Lisa Womack. By all accounts I’ve heard, he was quite loyal to her —- although I don’t know all the ends and outs of department politics. I strongly supported The Ledger‘s reporting on LPD and Devore’s leadership during that time. I was brutally critical of Womack in the wake of the Sue Eberle cruelty scandal. And I would not have picked Giddens as the man to follow her.
But nothing is permanent.
I think Giddens is doing a good job. I’m impressed by his endless, unhyped outreach and his willingness to listen. That’s a quality Womack did not have. He and I have talked about policing, generally. I’m impressed by his lack of public bravado. It’s a welcome difference from the self-conscious drama of Grady Judd. Most of all, with fingers firmly crossed, I’m very pleased by how the deadly violence that plagued neighborhoods in northwest Lakeland seems to have ebbed. It’s always hard to know the direct cause for that; but my conversations and reporting indicate that LPD has played a very constructive role. Giddens deserves credit for that as the department’s leader. Also, I’ve been told — not by Giddens — that Walker called the chief in part to ask him to start a gang task force meeting both men were scheduled to attend.
At the same time, Giddens recently expressed skepticism about body cameras, a piece of equipment I strongly support. But overall, I see effort and good faith from Giddens. That’s all I ever really ask from my police. Until it changes, you will hear me encourage him. He may or may not find that a welcome development. Indeed, he had no interest in commenting about this subject when I raised it with him recently. I don’t blame him.
Anyway, I think it’s a shame that Devore and Drake are enabling someone over at LPD who seems to want to undermine Giddens at a time of apparent progress and very definite public outreach, even to critics like me.
Let’s be clear: The Ledger did not come up with the Walker story through hard-nosed reporting. Nor did editorial writer Bill Thompson troll my Facebook page for a couple hours on a Saturday night looking for content. Someone at LPD served up these nuggets, most likely to Lenore Devore directly. And that’s fine. That’s how reporting and commentary often works.
However, it would make a much more meaningful story for the public to know who leaked the silly Walker phone call story. The public ought to know who is gunning for Walker and Giddens with this weak ammunition. The public ought to know the name of Lenore Devore’s co-conspirator in petty, anti-police silliness. Because that person almost certainly wears a uniform. It’s probably the same person who told The Ledger to write about my Facebook page. And that person was probably unhappy that Giddens actually sided with me on the issue I was discussing about LPD’s public presentation of itself. (It’s too convoluted and small potatoes to fully explain here. Contact me if you want to know.)
If The Ledger reports about its leaker, it will report some actual news about factionalism and organizational backstabbing at LPD. By all appearances,The Ledger’s executive editor has taken a personal side. One wonders if she receives special treatment from that side. She has received it before from LPD personnel. And one wonders what she makes honorable reporters do against their will.
As far as the leak to Gow Fields about Devore, it wasn’t me, if you’re wondering. I knew nothing about that report until Gow Fields called me the night before he released it with a heads up that he was going to copy me on his email. I like to think I’m not so petty as to spend time I could spend with my kids searching for minutiae like this. I did know something about the incident. Devore told me about it some time ago over coffee — because I will always talk in good faith to anybody who will talk to me.
For now, here’s the takeaway: the Ledger all but called me a cop-killer lover and told me to shut up because I publicly and directly and constructively engaged LPD over questions of life and death. Giddens and Vic White, to their credit, responded. They did not tell me to shut up. They engaged me.
Yet Ledger leadership is now doing the dirty work for some petty leaker with a vendetta and a weak Phillip Walker phone call report. I don’t know why Devore and her boss Kevin Drake are so unsupportive of our improving police leadership as to take part. I don’t know why they are unwilling to document their own failings or answer questions.
Perhaps people should ask them. Maybe Bill Thompson should ask Devore and Drake and write an editorial about it.