Jan. 16--No, it wasn't "another Laquan McDonald" video.
The surveillance camera footage released Thursday showing a Chicago police officer shooting and killing a fleeing, unarmed teenager was troubling, yes. Although 17-year-old Cedrick Chatman had just emerged from a carjacked vehicle and was sprinting away with a dark object in his hand when he was shot, nothing in the video justifies the police use of deadly force or supports the contention that he was posing a threat to the officers who were pursuing him.
But the images are small and blurry compared to the internationally famous dash-cam video showing the police shooting of McDonald as he walked briskly away from officers while carrying a small knife. The fact that officers said they believed the dark object in Chatman's hand was a gun complicates the viewer's judgment, even though the object turned out to be a cellphone box. And it's difficult to disprove the police contention that Chatman made "a subtle turn to the right" as he ran that, at the time, seemed threatening.
In other circumstances, the Chatman video might nevertheless have touched off massive protests and sparked a media firestorm. But the McDonald video, released in November, was so vivid and so brazenly at odds with written police accounts of the incident that it has set a high bar for outrage.
The three similar local videos released since McDonald -- of the deaths of Chatman, Alfontish Cockerham and Ronald Johnson -- show young African-American men gunned down while in full flight from police, but they have seemed comparatively ambiguous and, sadly, ho-hum.
What's notable about the Chatman video, though, is the date stamp, Jan. 7, 2013, which is 1,102 days before the city finally made it public.
The Chatman shooting could have been -- should have been -- the catalyst for introspection. Instead, it ended up merely touching off an internal investigation in which the Independent Police Review Authority ultimately cleared the shooting officer of wrongdoing (though not without firing the investigating supervisor who concluded the shooting was unjustified).
Are the training and the protocols adequate regarding use of deadly force? Are officers erring so far on the side of a certain type of caution that they're too often opening fire in circumstances when innocent victims could be hurt, killing people who don't pose an imminent threat to anyone? Is the brass doing enough to ensure that officers give thorough, honest accounts of fatal incidents?
These are certainly the types of questions city leaders should have asked themselves in the aftermath of the McDonald shooting in October 2014. The administration of Mayor Rahm Emanuel failed to recognize and address that, which is what has made this ongoing police scandal so infuriating.
Sure, he and/or top members of his staff seem to have attempted to minimize public knowledge of the McDonald shooting and bury the video, just as they hoped to bury the Chatman video (those of you who want government to operate more like a business, take note, because that's just what a lot of businesses do when they're hit with mortifying problems and difficult lawsuits).
But it's what officials didn't do in the aftermath, and the questions they didn't ask themselves until, at last, scrutiny and clamor forced their hand, that magnifies their shame.
Mend the State of the Union, don't end it
It's fine -- no never mind to me -- that the president goes before Congress once a year to deliver a speech full of self-congratulation and legislative pipe dreams.
He (or, perhaps soon, she) could simply send along written remarks in order to satisfy the Constitutional requirement that the president must "from time to time give ... the Congress information of the state of the union, and recommend to their consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient."
Stephen Carter made the case for just that change in an op-ed published in Thursday's Tribune following President Barack Obama's State of the Union speech Tuesday night. He objected to the tiresome "hoopla about a speech that hardly anybody watches and that, as a general rule, contains nothing new."
But the tiresome hoopla is mostly in the theatrics -- the pointless double introduction of the president, the ostentatious and partisan interruptions for applause, the use of human props ("guests") in the viewing gallery and the uncomfortable if riveting spectacle of having the president speak while the vice president and speaker of the House lurk in the frame over his right and left shoulders respectively.
It was downright weird Tuesday watching Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan attempt to calibrate his responses to passages in the speech so as not to suggest any approval whatsoever of the Obama agenda. His attempt to keep what he called "a poker face" and become merely part of the "wallpaper" behind the president came off as rude and tone deaf.
Here are a few things for which Ryan stonily refused to applaud: A renewed effort to cure cancer, protecting children from gun violence, equal pay for equal work, and "our troops coming home and our veterans."
I can't blame him, really, given how easy it would be alienate his party's base voters by indicating that he's not totally disgusted by all that Obama stands for. And I can't deny that Democratic leaders on the SOTU podium behind Republican presidents wouldn't or haven't exhibited similar partisan hostility.
So, step one in fixing the State of the Union is clearing the stage. Put the speaker and the veep out in the audience with everyone else.
Step two, clear the hall. Admit no guests from either side to lend symbolism or portent. Limit the audience to officials, staff and the media.
Step three, an agreement to ban standing ovations during the speech. Applause, yes, because you'll never do away with that, but only while seated, ladies and gentlemen, please.
And step four, one introduction only. We don't even really need that -- the president of the United States is the literal embodiment of the expression, "a person who needs no introduction" -- but certainly one will suffice.
There, fixed it for you.
Re:Tweets
In an online vote, readers selected the common sense observation, "Expect the expected. That's literally all you can do" by @ryandangersims as the tweet of the week.
Yet the finalist I've found myself quoting most often in conversation is advice from 7th-place finisher @Sortabad: "One good tip for flirting with your waitress is to remember that she doesn't actually like you at all, not even a tiny bit."
Want to get in on next week's voting? Write to ericzorn@gmail.com and I'll be sure you get an e-newsletter alert when the poll goes live.
