Police use-of-force is not as common as the public thinks. The news media too often fails to say so.

Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times

The family of Dexter Reed, who was fatally shot by Chicago police in late March, has filed a federal civil rights lawsuit alleging officers used excessive force and violated his civil rights.

They are right in one respect: The incident does reveal significant misconduct, but by the media — not the police.

What actually happened on West Ferdinand Street in Humboldt Park is irrelevant or worse, dismissed or omitted in too many media accounts because it is inconvenient to the larger narrative that America supposedly faces an epidemic of racist, brutal, arbitrary and unjustified "police violence."

The fact is, use of force by law enforcement is rare — and in only 1.8% of cases results in moderate or severe injury, one analysis found. Fatal police shootings are significantly rarer still. Those facts seem incongruous with the media narrative and the resulting public perception.

When Chicago’s Civilian Office of Police Accountability, its city-run police oversight body, released its initial report two weeks after Reed’s death, the headlines centered on a single detail: that the police fired 96 shots during the 41-second fatal encounter.

Nearly every news headline omitted the fact that Reed, who was reportedly wearing a full-face ski mask, fired first at officers, COPA said — as many as 11 times, wounding an officer. Those details barely appeared in the initial coverage and, if they did, they appear alongside the word "preliminary." Reed, who was 26, is often shown in family photos obtained by the media in his high school graduation gown and basketball uniform.

In the days after bodycam footage was released, the controversial head of COPA, Andrea Kersten, gave over a dozen media interviews in which she implied the officers were lying about the reason for the traffic stop. Kersten, whose investigation is not concluded, also released statements to the media suggesting the number of shots fired by officers was disproportionate and therefore unlawful.

When the Chicago police chief urged against a rush to judgment against the officers — whom COPA had not yet interviewed — the officers' prior complaints records mysteriously made it to the news media. Then Reed’s troubled and violent past — attacking his uncle with a knife in 2021 and charged with illegal gun possession in 2023 — emerged.

Reed’s case is not unique. All too often, police use-of-force cases are tried not in courts of law but in the court of public opinion, with the media as judge and jury, based on incomplete or false evidence.

After Michael Brown’s 2014 death in Ferguson, Missouri, media outlets reported rumors and half-truths suggesting Brown posed no threat, raised his hands and told the police officer not to shoot him. Protests and unrest roiled the country, and much of the public was indignant at the "unjustified" shooting. Congressmen and cable TV anchors performed the “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” protest gesture. Then-President Barack Obama suggested the police shooting was both unjustified and racially motivated.

Both the grand jury and federal investigations later cleared the officer. But the perception of wrongdoing lingered, so much so that the incoming district attorney pledged during his campaign to try the officer for Brown’s death. In 2020, the prosecutor concluded that "an independent and in-depth review of the evidence" did not meet the standard for charges of murder or manslaughter.

In 2020, the Kenosha, Wisconsin, police shooting of Jacob Blake, too, raised an outcry based on incomplete — and often wrong — information. Media reports portrayed Blake, who was shot by police after his girlfriend called 911 on him, as unarmed. The city erupted in flames, and Wisconsin's governor suggested the shooting was unjustified and racially motivated. In fact, Blake was armed with a knife, refused to comply with officer commands, and was tasered to little effect before he picked up the knife a second time, something Blake himself admitted. Two independent investigations — first by the Wisconsin Department of Justice and then the U.S. Department of Justice — cleared the officers. Yet the Blake incident is still cited as an instance of undue police violence.

The facts and the feelings about those cases and many law enforcement shootings remain divergent — thanks to media narratives.

Yet, much of the public thinks police violence is an “extremely” or “very serious” problem. Studies and surveys show the perceived prevalence of police use of force is many times higher than it is in reality. These beliefs are built on myths perpetuated by salacious and often misleading coverage. But, as psychologists have noted for decades, it is harder to dissuade someone of an earnestly believed falsehood than it is to persuade them of it in the first place.

Jason Johnson is the president of the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund and the former deputy commissioner of the Baltimore Police Department.

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