Tag Archives: #PoliticalCorrectness

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Once again, the Lexington Herald-Leader hides a mugshot

We have often mentioned the McClatchy Mugshot Policy that the Lexington Herald-Leader is obligated to follow. Of course, the Herald-Leader did not publish the mugshot of the defendant in the following story, despite having published several recently, all of white criminal suspects.

    Massive bond set for man accused of killing Richmond couple. Not guilty plea entered

    By Rayleigh Deaton | August 9, 2021 | 11:58 AM EDT

    A $5 million bond has been set for the man charged with two counts of murder in the slayings of a well-known Richmond couple.

    At an arraignment Monday, a plea of not guilty was entered on behalf of Thomas Birl, 51, who is accused of killing Christopher and Gracie Hager. Birl was also charged with arson, evidence tampering and receiving stolen property.

    Birl allegedly shot and killed the Hagers outside of a duplex they owned in Richmond, according to police. Birl was staying with his girlfriend. After the shooting, Birl set the duplex on fire and jumped out of a bedroom window before being arrested, according to court records.

What does the sentence, “Birl was staying with his girlfriend,” mean? Does it mean that he was staying at the apartment building owned by the Hagers? Perhaps Miss Deaton will update the article to fix that.

This has been a story that the newspaper has been all over:

But, all over it or not, the newspaper declined to print the mugshot of the accused, even though it has been freely broadcast all over the area by the local media, by Channel 18, WLEX-TV, and Channel 27, WKYT-TV, among others. Of course, The First Street Journal, which believes in the public’s right to know, does publish mugshots; they are a matter of the public record.

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Political correctness obscures the history of a brave black frontiersman

As we were moving from Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania to our small farm in the Bluegrass State, our 624 mile trip took us down Interstate 68 in Maryland. Along that most scenic of Interstate highways, the Old Line State maintains a few elevation signs near the tops of mountains, like Keyser’s Ridge at 2,880 feet, and Meadow Mountain, the elevation of which I do not remember. They were interesting, in passing, but not so interesting that I felt the need to research them.

Negro Mountain sign on I-68 in Maryland; the sign has been removed,

But there was one I did research, because of its seemingly unusual name: Negro Mountain. From The Baltimore Sun:

    The great divide: Negro Mountain in Maryland and Pennsylvania retains its name despite controversy

    October 3, 2020 | 3:01 AM EDT

    PITTSBURGH — An Allegheny Mountain ridge stretching some 30 miles from the Casselman River in southern Somerset County to Deep Creek Lake in Western Maryland has been the focus of controversy as attempts continue to change a name dating to the French and Indian War.

    The name in question: Negro Mountain.

    The name has been used consistently at least since 1841, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Negro Ridge was cited in the Pennsylvania Senate Journal in 1842.

    “If a name is offensive to people — remove it,” said James Saku, a geography professor and coordinator of African American Studies at Frostburg State University in Maryland, located about 20 miles east of the site.

There’s more at the original, but I have to ask: why is the word that the Rev Dr Martin Luther King, Jr, used to refer to his race, offensive?

Why was the mountain so named? The most widely accepted, but still not proven, story is that a free black man believed to have been named Nemesis, or possibly Goliath, the “body servant” of Col. Thomas Cresap, was killed in 1756 in a fierce battle with Indians during the French and Indian War.

    Cresap, an English-born frontiersman and land speculator in Maryland and Pennsylvania, named the mountain in honor of Nemesis’ race, according to an account from the Western Maryland Historic Library, part of the Western Maryland Regional Library in Hagerstown.

    That account also was published in Benjamin Franklin’s Pennsylvania Gazette on June 17, 1756. Another account offers a different version, saying the man died while fighting with a Capt. Friend.

Lynn Bowman, an adjunct associate professor of English and speech at Allegany College of Maryland, has a darker version. She claimed that the west side of the mountain there was an area called [culturally inappropriate slang term derived from Negro] Hollow where black people were lynched, though that would seem to post-date the name of the mountain.

Well, who can know, but it wouldn’t have made much sense to name the mountain for Nemesis’ race if the second account is the true one.

But one thing is certain: I would never have heard of Nemesis, or Goliath if that was what he was called, had the mountain been named Nemesis Mountain; it would have held no interest to me. I also did not know that there were free black men on the frontier at the time; now, I do.

Alas Political correctness has struck!

    Negro Mountain signs ‘part of history’

    By Teresa McMinn | November 3, 2019

    CUMBERLAND — Kenneth Lloyd wants to buy the Negro Mountain signs, which disappeared from Garrett County roads earlier this year, and install them in his front yard.

    Negro Mountain occupies a 30-mile stretch of the Alleghenies from Deep Creek Lake north to the Casselman River in Pennsylvania.

    The ridge in Garrett County reaches 3,075 feet at its peak, and in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, marks the highest point in the state.

    The Maryland Department of Transportation State Highway Administration earlier this year removed four Negro Mountain signs — two from Interstate 68 and two from U.S. Alternate Route 40.

    “I’m highly upset,” Lloyd, a Philadelphia native who now lives in Grantsville, said of the missing signs.

    “That’s a part of the history of this country,” said Lloyd, who served in the U.S. Marines from 1979 to 1986 and now works as a truck driver. “Learn from it.”

    According to Lora Rakowski, acting director of the state highway agency’s office of communications, the removal of the signs cost $212 in staff time.

    “We know this issue involves an important piece of local history,” she said via email. “We also know that some people feel the signage was inappropriate.”

There is some dispute about the man’s name; it was not given in the contemporaneous stories. What is given is that he was a free black man, a frontiersman, who fought and died on that mountain. But his deeds, even if perhaps somewhat legendary, honor him, but, due to the political correctness of the #woke[1]From Wikipedia: Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from … Continue reading, fewer people will know of it.

And so the signs are gone. There will be no future travelers on I-68 in Garrett County, Maryland, who will see the odd sign, and decide to Google search for it, and what little remains of Nemesis’ memory will fade away.

References

References
↑1 From Wikipedia:

    Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from the African-American Vernacular English expression “stay woke“, whose grammatical aspect refers to a continuing awareness of these issues.
    By the late 2010s, woke had been adopted as a more generic slang term broadly associated with left-wing politics and cultural issues (with the terms woke culture and woke politics also being used). It has been the subject of memes and ironic usage. Its widespread use since 2014 is a result of the Black Lives Matter movement.

I shall confess to sometimes “ironic usage” of the term. To put it bluntly, I think that the ‘woke’ are just boneheadedly stupid.
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Journolism: We publish what the Lexington Herald-Leader will not.

It has become somewhat of a passion with me to provide the information the Lexington Herald-Leader will not. We have noted the McClatchy Company’s Mugshot Policy and how the local newspaper has honored it by declining to publish mugshots of non-white criminal suspects but doing so when the accused are white. And we noted Robert Stacy McCain’s point that journalists used to refer to the “public’s right to know,” but that such has been subjugated to political correctness, and to what the Sacramento Bee called “perpetuating stereotypes about who commits crime in our community.”

Mr McCain noted last Saturday that the media were, once again, seeking to avoid perpetuating stereotypes.

You might think that when 13 people are shot in downtown Austin, and the gunman is still at large, that it would be a public service to describe this murderous maniac. But you’re not “woke” enough:

Police have only released a vague description of the suspected shooter as of Saturday morning. The Austin American-Statesman is not including the description as it is too vague at this time to be useful in identifying the shooter and such publication could be harmful in perpetuating stereotypes and potentially put innocent individuals at risk.

Oh, if it was a right-wing white supremacist Trump voter who had committed this atrocity, you bet the media would have no qualms identifying the suspect, “perpetuating stereotypes” or not. Because the “woke” media have made themselves utterly useless as a source of facts, we must turn to Breitbart for the relevant information:

A statement from the Austin Police Department states . . . “It is unknown if there is one, or multiple suspects involved. There is one suspect described as a black male, with dread locks, wearing a black shirt and a skinny build.” . . . The shooting follows massive cuts in police funding by the Austin City Council. The council cut $150 million from the police budget . . .

Is it any wonder why people hate the “fake news” media?

The Austin American-Statesman is not a McClatchy newspaper. The Herald-Leader is:

2 more suspects arrested after death of Lexington man who was shot, set on fire

By Jeremy Chisenhall | June 14, 2021 | 11:55 AM EDT | Updated 4:11 PM EDT

Two more people have been charged in connection with a Lexington homicide after the victim’s body was set on fire in a barn, according to court records.

Martae Laron Shanks and Autumn Owens, both residents in the building where 38-year-old Lazarus Parker was allegedly shot and killed, have been charged with arson, abusing a corpse and criminal mischief, according to an indictment from a Fayette County grand jury.

The grand jury alleged that Shanks and Owens either intentionally started the fire or tried to help with the fire by purchasing gasoline in Fayette County and taking it to Bourbon County to burn Parker’s body.

Shanks and Owens were both arrested in Scott County and then transferred to the Lexington-Fayette County Detention Center last week, according to jail records.

Cecil T Russell (Fayette County Detention Center)

Cecil T. Russell, a co-defendant with Shanks and Owens in the case, was previously charged with murder. Russell was charged with killing Parker after a “cooperating witness” told investigators she heard Russell and Parker get into an argument before multiple gunshots rang out and someone screamed, according to an arrest warrant.

Cecil Russell’s mugshot was not published in the Herald-Leader, but I was able to find it in an Associated Press story published by WVLT-TV. The First Street Journal is dedicated to your right to know, and thus we reproduce it here.

Martae Shanks (Fayette County Detention Center)

More, I was able to open account with the Fayette County Detention Center, and get access to mugshots there, thus getting the mugshot of Mr Shanks. There are actually three mugshots of Mr Shanks in the records, dated October 16, 2015, March 4, 2021, and June 9, 2021, so it would seem that he is not unfamiliar with the jail. The record lists only the current offenses with which he is charged.

There were two mugshots for Autumn Owens, one dated March 4, 2021, and the current one June 10, 2021. It’s interesting that both of her bookings came concomitantly with Mr Shanks. As with Mr Shanks, only her current charges are listed on the jail website.

Autumn Owens

Is there something wrong with a mid-sized newspaper, part of a national newspaper chain, subjugating the public’s right to know to political correctness? I think that there is, and that’s why this website goes ahead and finds and published these mugshots. As for the claim that this “perpetuates stereotypes,” please note that one of the three suspects here is white, and that, in my previous post with mugshots, one of the convicted criminals was white, and one was black.[1]I confess: I had originally written that post with the black offender’s mugshot first, and the white offender’s second. Since Twitter tends to pick up the first photo in an article, I … Continue reading

A further note: the Lexington homicide investigations page has not, as of this publication, been updated since May 9th. We had previously noted this, and there have been three additional homicides in the city since that date. Someone needs to start doing his job.

Mr McCain was correct, and the credentialed media, decades ago, were correct: the public does have a right to know these things. The question is: why so small, private websites like Mr McCain’s or mine have to be the ones to

References

References
↑1 I confess: I had originally written that post with the black offender’s mugshot first, and the white offender’s second. Since Twitter tends to pick up the first photo in an article, I switched the order, so that the tweet of the article would show the white offender.
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Journolism: Newspapers don’t think their readers can handle the truth! Once again, the Lexington Herald-Leader gets racially selective in publishing mugshots

Have you ever heard of JournoList? It was an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, to facilitate communication between them across multiple newsrooms, the exposure of which called into question their objectivity. I use the term ‘journolism’ frequently when writing about media bias.

As we have previously noted, the McClatchy Company, which owns the Lexington Herald-Leader, has an explicit mugshot policy:

Publishing mugshots of arrestees has been shown to have lasting effects on both the people photographed and marginalized communities. The permanence of the internet can mean those arrested but not convicted of a crime have the photograph attached to their names forever. Beyond the personal impact, inappropriate publication of mugshots disproportionately harms people of color and those with mental illness. In fact, some police departments have started moving away from taking/releasing mugshots as a routine part of their procedures.

To address these concerns, McClatchy will not publish crime mugshots — online, or in print, from any newsroom or content-producing team — unless approved by an editor. To be clear, this means that in addition to photos accompanying text stories, McClatchy will not publish “Most wanted” or “Mugshot galleries” in slide-show, video or print.

Any exception to this policy must be approved by an editor. Editors considering an exception should ask:

  • Is there an urgent threat to the community?
  • Is this person a public official or the suspect in a hate crime?
  • Is this a serial killer suspect or a high-profile crime?

If an exception is made, editors will need to take an additional step with the Pub Center to confirm publication by making a note in the ‘package notes‘ field in Sluglife.

As I have previously stated, despite several Google searches, using various permutations, I have not been able to find this policy in written form. I found this tweet:

and a photograph I have previously used from another tweet, along with the Sacramento Bee’s precursor article. Assistant Managing Editor Ryan Lillis wrote:

The Sacramento Bee announced Wednesday it will limit the publication of police booking photos, surveillance photos and videos of alleged crimes, and composite sketches of suspects provided by law enforcement agencies.

Publishing these photographs and videos disproportionately harms people of color and those with mental illness, while also perpetuating stereotypes about who commits crime in our community.

McClatchy’s headquarters are located in the Sacramento Bee’s building.

And thus we return to the Herald-leader:

Eastern Kentucky man tries to run over a cop, flees police after being shot at

By Jeremy Chisenhall | May 28, 2021 | 8:13 AM

An Eastern Kentucky police officer shot at a suspect Thursday afternoon after the suspect allegedly tried to run the cop over, according to Kentucky State Police.

James Bussell, a 45-year-old from Owingsville, allegedly sped away from a Mount Sterling police officer during a traffic stop, made a U-turn and tried to run over the officer. The officer involved in the traffic stop fired his gun at Bussell, but didn’t hit him. The suspect made another U-turn and tried to run the cop over again, state police said.

After Bussell’s second attempt to run the officer over, his car got stuck, according to state police. He got out and fled on foot, state police said. The altercation didn’t result in any injuries, police said.

Clearly a bad dude. There’s more at the original, including this:

Well, how ’bout that? The Herald-Leader posted another photo, of a criminal suspect, this one coming from the Mt Starling, Kentucky, Police Department’s Facebook page.

Unlike the photos of Jessica Ahlbrand and Ronnie Helton,[1]The newspaper deleted Mr Helton’s mugshot from the article a couple of weeks after publication, by May 16. which the newspaper published, Mr Bussell is still on the loose. The text of the MSPD’s Facebook page and Jeremy Chisenhall’s newspaper article does not make clear that Mr Bussell fits as “an urgent threat to the community,” but he is charged with:

  1. Attempted Murder (Police Officer).
  2. Fleeing or Evading Police 1st Degree (Motor Vehicle).
  3. Wanton Endangerment 1st Degree (Police Officer).

Yeah, those are pretty serious, and I would not disagree with the assessment that Mr Bussell is a threat to the community. But so was Juanyah Jamal Clay, and the Herald-Leader declined to publish his mugshot when he was on the lam.

So, why did an editor approve of publishing Mr Bussell’s photos, but not Mr Clay’s? Mr Bussell is charged with attempted murder, while Mr Clay was wanted on an murder, not attempted murder, but actual murder charge. Why publish the mugshots of Miss Ahlbrand and Mr Helton, both of whom were in custody, but not Mr Clay, who was still on the loose?

Why? Despite my obviously brilliant mind, I am not a telepath, and cannot read the minds of Mr Chisenhall, or peter Baniak, Executive Editor and General Manager of the Herald-Leader, but, when I look at all of the photos of criminals and criminal suspects that the newspaper has published, it has been easy to notice one thing: all of the published mugshots I’ve seen have been of white suspects. Mr Lillis’ article noted that the Sacramento Bee was concerned about “perpetuating stereotypes about who commits crime in our community,” and that could fit in well with the pattern I have noticed in the Herald-Leader.

I am not the only person who has noticed!

We have noted previously Elizabeth Hughes, publisher of The Philadelphia Inquirer, and her determination to make her newspaper “an anti-racist news organization,” but has turned it into exactly that, a newspaper more concerned with racial identity and sorting out its news coverage that way than it has been about the “public’s right to know.”

The Society of Professional Journalists published their Code of Ethics; you should read it. It says, among other things, that “Journalists must be free of obligation to any interest other than the public’s right to know the truth.” This is exactly the opposite of McClatchy’s decision to suppress photographs of criminals and crime suspects because publication might cause “disproportionate harm” to one group or another, or what facially appears to be the Herald-Leader’s editorial decisions[2]Remember: an editor must approve all published mugshots. This is (supposedly) not left up to the various article authors. to skew the public’s perception by publishing only the photographs of white criminals and suspects.

It ought to be simple: just tell the truth, and be consistent in publication policies. If the editors are going to decide to publish photos of suspects who are still on the loose. publish photos of all suspects who are on the loose. Be journalists, and not journolists.

References

References
↑1 The newspaper deleted Mr Helton’s mugshot from the article a couple of weeks after publication, by May 16.
↑2 Remember: an editor must approve all published mugshots. This is (supposedly) not left up to the various article authors.
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Journolism: The Brown Daily Herald decides to hide the truth.

The Brown Daily Herald is the student newspaper for Brown University, a hoitiest of the toitiest Ivy League college, founded in 1764 as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, and is the seventh oldest college in the United States. Highly selective, Brown accepts only the best of the best, or president’s daughters, and even they can get kicked out for poor academic performance.

So it was with some amusement that I read this, with a hat tip to my good friend Hube:

Editors’ note: Changing deadnames and pronouns

By 131th Editorial Board[1]Editors’ Notes are written by The Herald’s 131st editorial board: Kayla Guo ’22.5, Henry Dawson ’22.5, Li Goldstein ’22, Emilija Sagaityte ’22, Kate Ok ’22, Emily Teng ’22 and Kamran … Continue reading | Monday, May 17, 2021

In order to respect individuals’ current and lived identities, The Herald has adopted a new policy regarding requests from transgender or nonbinary individuals to replace their deadname and/or change their pronouns featured in previously published work on The Herald’s website. Upon receiving such a request, The Herald will make the gender-affirming changes online in a timely manner and without a correction or editor’s note marking the change.

It is normal journalistic procedure to note corrections made to articles, so the Herald is telling readers that it will not abide by what the journalism students are (supposedly) being taught by their professors.[2]The 131th Editorial Board members, being in their late teens and early twenties, may never have heard of JournoList, from which I have taken the word ‘journolism.’

This policy is intended to respect transgender and nonbinary individuals. We will not include an editor’s note announcing the gender-affirming change(s) made in response to such a request because we believe such a note would risk outing the individual and causing harm. Because the information included in the article was accurate at the time of publishing, we do not feel this raises questions about transparency or accountability.

What does that even mean? If “the information included in the article was accurate” at the time of publication,[3]Note that I have corrected their grammar. Journalism students should not have such poor grammar. then it was accurate, and this editorial change is one which makes the article inaccurate. If “the information included in the article was accurate” at the time of publication, then declining to note such is the opposite of “transparency or accountability.” Accountability means taking responsibility for one’s actions; the Editorial Board are deliberately refusing accountability.

How, I have to ask, does changing a story, without issuing a notice of correction, avoid “outing the individual and causing harm”? Clearly, if the person in question identified as one sex at the time the story was written, and another later on, that story has gone deep into the archives. Almost no one would see the old story unless he were searching for it, and a search for Cindy Brown is not going to result in a story about Carl Brown. The Editorial Board are sacrificing journalistic integrity for no reason at all.

We think this policy reflects both our commitment to accuracy and our ethical obligation to minimize harm. We are eager to see how other newsrooms, both our student peers and at professional news organizations, address this and similar questions in the coming months and years.

As we have noted concerning the Lexington Herald-Leader’s and McClatchy’s (apparent) policies in general, withholding information is both a deliberate inaccuracy and can promote actual harm.

Journalists have a self-assumed duty to the truth; what the Editorial Board are doing is to deliberately obscure the truth. If John Smith was publicly identifying as John Smith at the time of the news story, it becomes wholly inaccurate to change his name to Jane Smith just because he has decided that he is a she now. The news story was about the situation at the time, and includes how other people saw and reacted to John Smith, not Jane Smith.

A great truth of which the Editorial Board may be unaware: people react differently to males and females, and this is part of the news.

One would hope that “how other newsrooms, both our student peers and at professional news organizations, address this and similar questions in the coming months and years,” is to address such issues is by doing something really radical, like telling the truth. The Editorial Board of The Brown Daily Herald have apparently decided that telling the truth is far less important than being #woke and trendy.

References

References
↑1 Editors’ Notes are written by The Herald’s 131st editorial board: Kayla Guo ’22.5, Henry Dawson ’22.5, Li Goldstein ’22, Emilija Sagaityte ’22, Kate Ok ’22, Emily Teng ’22 and Kamran King ’22
↑2 The 131th Editorial Board members, being in their late teens and early twenties, may never have heard of JournoList, from which I have taken the word ‘journolism.’
↑3 Note that I have corrected their grammar. Journalism students should not have such poor grammar.
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Journolism: The Philadelphia Inquirer uncritically pushes transgenderism

When The Philadelphia Inquirer fired accepted the resignation of Executive Editor Stan Wischnowski due to pressure from the #woke staffers over his article title “Buildings Matter, Too,” it seems as though the last of the adults left the newspaper. Senior Editor Gabriel Escobar certainly hasn’t shown any leadership, nor has Charlotte Sutton, Assistant Managing Editor, Health, Business & Built Environment, if they let this kind of drivel be published:

These Penn State students are tackling the issue of period poverty on their own campus

A campus-wide survey found 13% of students who menstruate have skipped class or work because they didn’t have access to period products at Penn State.

By Bethany Ao | May 18, 2021

Last fall, when Jess Strait became president of a Penn State club focused on eliminating stigma associated with menstruation, one of her goals was to find out how period poverty — the inability to afford sanitary products — was affecting her fellow classmates.

Inspired by the work of No More Secrets, a Mount Airy nonprofit that delivers menstrual care packages around Philadelphia, Strait, a 20-year-old rising senior, and her team at the Days for Girls club drafted a short survey of 10 open-ended questions about menstruation. What they found shocked them.

Of the approximately 500 students surveyed, 13% have skipped class or work because they didn’t have the products they need.

If you apply that rate to the entire student body, Strait said, “that should be at least 2,500 undergraduates who are missing classes and not getting the most of their education because they don’t have period products.”

I’ve seen stories like this for years, and yes, I’m male, but as a man who has lived with a woman for 49 years, and the father of daughters, I’ve seen how women adapt to the fact that they have periods, and learn to carry “period products” with them as their cycles near menstruation.

I get it: sometimes women do get caught by surprise when it comes to their periods. Miss Ao’s article has to do with the availability of “period products” on campus, and the claim that some women are unable to afford them. I have no comments about such things.

But what got me about the article was the verbiage used. This paragraph illustrates it:

A study by researchers at George Mason University’s College of Health and Human Services published in February found that one in 10 college students who menstruate reported chronic period poverty, which means that they struggled to pay for basic products each month. And 14% had trouble paying for menstrual products within the last year.

LOL! “(C)ollege students who menstruate”? Wouldn’t they be known as women?

Oops, that’s what got J K Rowling in such trouble.

Miss Ao did use some unwoke language in places, the very next paragraph using the word “woman” thrice, but it wasn’t too much further down that she wrote “At Penn State, the Days for Girls club conducted their own survey of more than 500 students who menstruate.” How incredibly unwoke that organization must be, using the term “Girls”, and thus excluding the “men who menstruate” from their membership and services!

“That was something that had been under our radar before this semester,” (Miss Strait) said. “In the free response questions we had several students who don’t identify as women and sometimes in their bathrooms there wasn’t a trash can, at all. They might have to carry a product with them to dispose of later. The fact that those communities are kind of being put at risk … was really alarming to us.”

The article went on to note that Indiana University supplies free “period products” in all public bathrooms, including men’s bathrooms, but, alas! some colleges do not.

Let me be clear on this: people who menstruate are women, are female. No male has ever had, or ever will have, a period, because menstruation is a biological function limited to females. We can forgive Miss Ao for reporting that Miss Strait was concerned about female “students who don’t identify as women,” because that’s Miss Strait’s belief, not the reporter’s. But Miss Ao uncritically used the term “students who menstruate” in paragraphs which were no quotations of someone else, and that is something which pushes the cockamamie agenda that girls can be boys and boys can be girls.

A real editor would have ‘blue penciled’ that, but there is little evidence that The Philadelphia Inquirer has any real editors anymore.

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Political correctness in the city of Lexington

We have previously noted that the Lexington Herald-Leader apparently does not post photos of criminal suspects, — though an exception was recently made for a white suspect — even though the other city media do, and that McClatchy Company, which owns the Herald-Leader, apparently does not either.

Lexington Police Department shooting investigations chart; screen capture from city website.

Well, it seems that the Lexington city government is just as eaten up with political correctness as its newspaper. The unreadably small chart to the right, which you can expand by clicking on the image, is a screen capture from the city government’s Shooting investigations page, taken at 4:02 PM EDT on Monday, May 10th. If you expand it, you will see that it lists the victims’ sex, race and age, along with the suspect, if known. Of 31 shooting investigations, 24 of the victims are listed as black, 3 as Hispanic, and 4 as white.

Lexington Police Department shooting investigations chart; screen capture from city website.

But when you come to the city’s Homicide investigations page, on a different page of the same website — the two pages are linked — shown on the left, you’ll notice, if you click on the screen capture and expand it, the victims’ sex and race are not included. The Shootings investigation page excludes homicide victims.

I wonder why that is.

Now, you can get that information on the website original, in some cases, by clicking on the crime scene location. Nevertheless, I find it an odd omission, considering that the information is posted on the shootings investigations page; why exclude information that the police clearly have?[1]Note that the investigation of the shooting on January 31, 2021, on the 100 block of West Vine Street, has both a surviving shooting victim and the murder of Lonnie Oxendine. Are we to somehow think … Continue reading Why do the Lexington Police and city government censor information they clearly have? Why, if they are going to make the information posted for plain public view in the first place, do they deliberately withhold statistical information?

Well, I think that I can tell you. Lexington is, according to 2019 Census Department guesstimates, 74.9% white, 14.6% black and 7.2% Hispanic (of any race). If the city puts out too much information, then an [insert slang term for the rectum here] like me might look at the numbers and ask something like, ‘If the city is only 14.6% black, why are 77.4% of the shooting victims black? If the Lexington Police Department told us the race of the homicide victims, would we find a similar racial disparity?[2]According to the Homicide investigations page, all 15 of the listed victims — the page had not been updated with the most recent homicide — were killed by gunfire.

Lexington isn’t Chicago or Philadelphia yet, though sometimes it seems as though the criminal element there is taking that as a personal challenge. But if the city’s violence problems are ever going to be solved, they have to be solved by addressing the problem properly, by recognizing what and where the problem lays, and that’s something the city, and its newspaper, just won’t do.

References

References
↑1 Note that the investigation of the shooting on January 31, 2021, on the 100 block of West Vine Street, has both a surviving shooting victim and the murder of Lonnie Oxendine. Are we to somehow think that the Lexington Police recorded the race, sex and age of the surviving shooting victim but not that of the man who perished?
↑2 According to the Homicide investigations page, all 15 of the listed victims — the page had not been updated with the most recent homicide — were killed by gunfire.
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And another one bites the dust! Do black lives matter in Lexington?

There are no suspects yet, so I cannot fault the Lexington Herald-Leader for not posting their photos, but it does seem to be the newspaper’s policy specifically, and McClatchy Company’s policy in general, not to do so.

Teenager killed, two others injured in North Lexington shooting

By Karla Ward | May 8, 2021 07:57 PM EDT | Updated; May 9, 2021 | 10:20 AM EDT

Two men and a teen boy were taken to the hospital with serious injuries Saturday night after a shooting in a neighborhood off Georgetown Street.

The teenager, later identified as 17-year-old Mar’quevion Leach, died of his injuries at University of Kentucky Chandler Hospital, the Fayette County Coroner’s Office announced late Saturday.

Lexington police Lt. Chris Cooper said Saturday that officers were called to the 700 block of Florence Avenue just after 6 p.m. He said police received several calls about shots fired.

“Upon arrival, we did locate several individuals who had been injured by gunfire,” he said.

There’s a little more at the original.

Unless I’ve missed one, young Mr Leach would be the sixteenth person murdered in Lexington thus far this year. Saturday having been the 128th day of the year, that would put Lexington at one murder every eight days, assuming none of the other victims of what may have been a gun battle die. At that rate, Lexington would see 45 to 46 people murdered in 2021; the city set it’s records of 34 murders just last year, and that was four over the previous record of 30, set the year before.

Actually, 45 to 46 (the actual number is 45.625) is a better rate than just three weeks ago, when the city was on track for 51 homicides. But, if one of the other shooting victims succumbs, and becomes the 17th homicide victim, the projected total jumps to between 48 and 49 victims. A 17th would be fully half of 2020’s total, just 1/3 of the way through the year.

And the summer hasn’t started yet!

Do black lives matter in Lexington? It doesn’t really seem so, as young black men are being killed at record rates in a city which used to be fairly peaceful; I lived in the city from 1971 through 1984.[1]There is a Facebook page for a Mar’quevion Leach in Lexington, though the profile photo was posted ten years ago. I assume that this is the same person, as the name is fairly unusual.

The Herald-Leader reported that the police believe that the victims were “probably targeted.” At least to one person, Mr Leach’s black life didn’t matter, nor the lives of the other two victims.

References

References
↑1 There is a Facebook page for a Mar’quevion Leach in Lexington, though the profile photo was posted ten years ago. I assume that this is the same person, as the name is fairly unusual.
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Political correctness in the Lexington Herald-Leader? (Part 4)

We have previously noted that the Lexington Herald-Leader does not like posting photographs of accused criminals, even when those suspects are still at large and publishing the photo might help the police capture him. Thus, we were somewhat surprised when the Herald-Leader did post a photo of an accused, but not convicted, criminal suspect. Was this an editorial change?

Apparently not.

Man shot by Lexington police accused of taking hostages inside home, firing shots

By Morgan Eads and Jeremy Chisenhall | May 03, 2021 | 3:11 PM EDT

A man who was shot over the weekend by Lexington police is facing multiple charges related to accusations that he held multiple children and adults in a home as hostages.

Ryan Dontese Jones, 21, is charged with first-degree burglary, four counts of kidnapping a minor, five counts of kidnapping an adult and nine counts of wanton endangerment.

Jones was set to be arraigned Monday, but he had been put in isolation in the Fayette County jail due to COVID-19 precautions and could not attend the remote proceedings. His arraignment was rescheduled for next week. His bond is set at $50,000, according to court records.

Lexington police said they were originally called to the 600 block of Marshall Lane for a report of shots fired at about 5:30 p.m. on Saturday. An officer who arrived was shot at by Jones and returned fire, striking him in the shoulder, police said. The officer was not injured.

Jones is accused of forcing his way into a home on Marshall Lane, and pointing a handgun and shooting at the people inside, according to his arrest citation. He is also accused of restraining multiple adults and children to use them as “hostages,” according to the citation.

Ryan Dontese Jones. Photo by Lexington-Fayette County Detention Center.

This is the mug shot of the accused suspect, but no, it wasn’t in what my, sadly late, best friend used to call the Herald-Liberal. It was published by Channel 36, WTVQ, and that’s where I found it.

The photo was provided by the Lexington/Fayette County jail; it is free to the media. Why, then, did the Herald-Leader choose not to use it?

In our previous articles on this subject, we noted that the Herald-Leader included illustrations in their articles that were on topic, but simply fluff illustrations, and thus there were no concerns about a photo of the suspect taking up too much bandwidth. To be fair, in this article, the herald-Leader included a photo which was of the crime scene itself, so whatever bandwidth concerns the newspaper might have had, if they have any at all, were used in a photo directly related to the event. Nevertheless, the photo is simply of seven Lexington Police cruisers, on the street, with crime scene tape. It is a too-common image which does not actually inform the reader of much at all, though we can tell that the neighborhood is one of what appears to be a decent-looking subdivision of brick single-family homes, in what seems like a ‘starter home‘ neighborhood.

So, why is the Herald-Leader so seemingly unwilling to publish mug shots of accused criminal suspects? If it is because the suspects have been accused, but not convicted, why did the paper include the photo of Ronnie Helton? If it is to protect those who have been accused but not convicted, why print the names of the suspects? Those, after all, are far more likely to be found in a Google search, and, if Mr Jones is acquitted of these charges, and then goes out job hunting, any responsible human resources department is going to do a due diligence Google search, and find that he was accused of a pretty serious crime.

What, then, is the point?