Forgive such a brutally harsh question, but it’s experimental, perhaps a way to prove a point about the absence of common sense throughout our TV news media. Here goes:
Would it make much difference in your grief-gutted life if your family had been run down and killed by an impaired driver, or an unimpaired driver?
On Oct. 3, Miriam Carey, a 34-year-old dental hygienist from Connecticut, was shot and killed by Washington, DC police, ending a chase that began after she rammed her car into security barriers at both the White House and the Capitol Building.
She had failed to surrender after gun-pointing officers and Secret Service circled her Infiniti. She sped through them, depositing a Secret Serviceman on the hood of her car — an attempted homicide — then drove wildly through streets housing the federal government, national landmarks and museums.
The episode began at 2:12 p.m., when the streets Carey flew through, chased by police cars, were crowded with thousands of pedestrians. The video of her spinning, speeding car — at that point, an anti-personnel weapon — remains staggering.
Eventually, police shot and killed Carey, then discovered that in the back seat was her uninjured 1-year-old daughter.
Then came word that Carey suffered from severe mental health issues leading to bizarre beliefs, including President Obama having ordered her surveillance. Her family didn’t even know that she and her daughter were in DC.
And so, a horrifying episode ended as well as could reasonably be expected. Only the perpetrator — on Oct. 3 an unfortunate but delusional, deadly dangerous soul — was killed.
But within two days, Carey’s family held a news conference to ask why she was dead, why the police shot her. After all, she didn’t have a gun. Were the police really forced to take lethal action? They demanded an investigation.
The tacit, underlying theme was that, yes, while Carey was mentally impaired, the cops — as always — were trigger happy, needlessly shooting and killing a hard-working, unarmed mother of a 1-year-old.
All the national newscasts covered that news conference; all reported the family’s grief and position. But nothing else. There was no one to even hint that while her family’s grief is understandable, their position leaned toward preposterous.
Thus, the questions asked by Carey’s family became legitimized and politicized.
At a DC vigil held for Carey, the Rev. Anthony Motley said, “What if I had driven where I shouldn’t have driven, and did something I shouldn’t have done because I was suffering from mental deprivation? What if that had been me? . . . We pray that the investigation will bear out whether or not the officers used proper judgment or excessive force.”
Motley added that he personally felt that “something could have been done a little differently.”
For crying out loud, she crashed security barriers at the White House and at the Capitol; that’s merely “driving where I shouldn’t be driving”?
And so the sad but logical ending to Carey’s life became a non-issue, as if police could know and weigh her impairment, then allow her to proceed, as if she weren’t first given the opportunity to surrender, as if being run over by a deranged driver is preferable to being run over by someone else.
And our news media allowed the police’s decision — having made a calculation that was in the immediate best interests of all except the perpetrator — to be a decision worthy of suspicion and mistrust. All you have to do is ignore the facts, especially that video.
Meanwhile, had Carey not been shot and instead crashed into a group of touring school kids, killing three and injuring 12, their families would demand to know why police let her get away — didn’t shoot — the first time.
That, too, would’ve made all the national newscasts.