Whipped Cream Difficulties

The NYT is offering buyouts to some of the staff.

In a memo to the newsroom, Dean Baquet, the executive editor, and Joseph Kahn, the managing editor, said the current system of copy editors and “backfielders” who assign and shape articles would be replaced with a single group of editors who would be responsible for all aspects of an article. Another editor would be “looking over their shoulders before publication.”

I probably would not have noted this story if it wasn’t for another aspect of it: the paper of record is also eliminating the “public editor” position.

Mr. Sulzberger, in a newsroom memo, said the public editor’s role had become outdated.
“Our followers on social media and our readers across the internet have come together to collectively serve as a modern watchdog, more vigilant and forceful than one person could ever be,” he wrote. “Our responsibility is to empower all of those watchdogs, and to listen to them, rather than to channel their voice through a single office.”

Am I reading this right? Is Sulzberger basically saying he plans to turn the role of the public editor over to the screaming mob – you know, the screaming mob that threatened to cancel their subscriptions because the paper published views by someone they disagreed with?

On Tuesday, The Times announced the creation of the Reader Center, an initiative that appeared to overlap somewhat with the public editor’s role. The center will be responsible for responding directly to readers, explaining coverage decisions and inviting readers to contribute their voices.

Or am I reading this wrong?

Speaking of “reading this wrong”, there has to be more to this story than meets the eye:

A New York City police sergeant who fatally shot a mentally ill woman in her Bronx apartment in October was charged on Wednesday with murder in the woman’s death.

The charges are “second-degree murder, first- and second-degree manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide”. He’s already been suspended without pay, and was “stripped of his badge and gun and placed on modified duty” after the shooting.

Initially, the police said that Sergeant Barry persuaded Ms. Danner to drop a pair of scissors, but that she picked up a bat and tried to swing at him. Only Sergeant Barry was in the bedroom with Ms. Danner.

Some people might say that I’m a cop groupie, and that I want to make excuses for cops. It’s true that I’ve been through two citizen’s police academy classes. I think I have an informed perspective on how the police work. But I also think I’m a rational and reasonable person. I’m a lot more sympathetic to the views of people like Grits and Radley Balko than I probably let on (though a lot of that has to do more with the courts and jails than boots-on-the-ground police work).

I wish we did a better job of handling mental illness in this country. I think the APD, in particular, is making great efforts in this area. But a lot of their recent shootings have been of emotionally disturbed/mentally ill people. I wish that wasn’t the case. But in all the recent cases I know about, unless new evidence has emerged, these were emergent situations where either an officer or a bystander was in immediate danger and the police officers didn’t have a choice on how to respond.

Someone in one of my CPA classes made the point: we expect the police to solve, in 30 minutes, family and social problems that have taken years – even generations – to emerge.

Mayor Bill de Blasio and the police commissioner, James P. O’Neill, said Sergeant Barry had not followed police protocol for dealing with people with mental illness. Specifically, he did not use his stun gun to try to subdue Ms. Danner, and he did not wait for a specialized Emergency Service Unit to arrive.

I quoted Tam back in October when this happened, and I’ll borrow from her again:

A baseball bat to the cranium is lethal force and don’t kid yourself otherwise. You start lethal forcing at me and I’m gonna lethal force right back at you to make you stop.

And if Mayor de Blasio and Commissioner O’Neill don’t believe a baseball bat is lethal force, I invite them to join me in Times Square and let me swing baseball bats at their heads.

The “didn’t wait for ESU” thing may be more defensible, but that’s a policy violation, not a murder charge. And if he believed someone was being carved up with scissors, or was doing themselves harm, was he supposed to wait for ESU to arrive, whenever that was? I’ll also concede the point that the officer may have lied about the circumstances: I hope not, but if that is the basis for the prosecution, it should come out at trial. Meanwhile: body cameras.

And finally, speaking of “lethal force right back at you”, I should have noted this story last night. But it was still kind of emergent, and I had a bad day yesterday.

Two bounty hunters show up at a car dealership because they believe a wanted fugitive may make an appearance. They may, or may not, have identified themselves as “federal agents”.

After several hours, bad guy shows up. Bounty hunters corner him in an office. Bad guy goes for his gun, apparently drops it on the desk, goes to retrieve it. There’s a scuffle.

And when it is all over, both bounty hunters and the bad guy are dead.

I don’t know what lessons can be learned from this. Maybe “don’t drop your gun”? Or “if you have the tactical advantage, press it”? It just seems bizarre and worth noting.