"One of the women was white, had long blonde hair, a piercing over her left eye, was in her 20s and was wearing a light-colored shirt and blue jeans. There were incomplete descriptions for the three men and the second female who asked for the water."That is misleading, relying on a very deceptive meaning of "incomplete description." In fact, there were no "complete" descriptions of any suspects — all descriptions were incomplete — but there were other descriptions provided by the police that the News & Record declined to report because they were "incomplete."
Here is the description of the suspects from the GPD press release:
"The black female was described as having a ponytail, wearing a black shirt, black coat and black pants with gold specks. She appeared to be in her 20’s. The white-female was described as having long blonde hair, a piercing over her left eye, and wearing a light colored shirt and blue jeans. She also appeared to be in her 20’s. The white-males were described as wearing tan masks, light colored shirts and blue jeans."For the News & Record to describe one suspect then decline to describe the others with the explanation that the other descriptions were "incomplete" is disingenuous, at best. None of the descriptions were "complete." The descriptions of the two females had the same level of detail but for the additional description of a piece of jewelry on one of the suspects. How does it serve the News & Recrod's readers for it to withhold information from them? What purpose does it serve?
All news outlets make editorial decisions about reporting generic descriptions of criminals. It is irresponsible to say something like "police are looking for a black man," because there are millions of black men. In order to responsibly print a description, there needs to be a more unique identifier. In this case, the piercing over the eye was considered descriptive enough to be relevant. But any news outlet has to reach its own description threshold on a case by case basis.
ReplyDeleteThe police will often offer descriptions of suspects that include only race and gender. Is that "irresponsible?" Isn't it, actually, irresponsible to withhold information from the public that may help solve a crime?
ReplyDelete