Aliyya Swaby Photo
Agnew after his release from custody.
(Opinion) A man gets into an argument at a liquor store and then claims he was mishandled by police. How do you tell that story?
Do you include the man’s arrest record? If so, to what extent? Do you include allegations that the man, who is African-American and felt he was a target of racism, made a racist comment against an Indian-American store clerk?
After publishing an article about the Saturday night arrests of Jeffrey Agnew and Tyeisha Hellamns, we received various comments and messages praising or critiquing our coverage, and drawing conclusions about the guilt or innocence of either the police or the two people arrested.
The discussion in our comments section and a direct message from an activist who attended the rally in front of the police station Sunday sparked internal discussions about how the Independent reports on arrests and incidents of alleged police brutality and misconduct — especially when our reporters are navigating varying sides of the same story.
I got a few texts and messages from activists Sunday morning alerting me to the rally and I biked to the police station at 1 Union Ave. On the way, I called Independent editor Paul Bass to assist by getting comment from the police and the owner of the Whalley Avenue liquor store Beverage Boss,the location of the altercation and arrest.
We know a few things for sure, since all parties corroborated the information. Agnew and the man behind the counter at Beverage Boss had a verbal altercation. The police were called in to the store. They arrested Agnew and took him to the hospital, before transferring him to 1 Union Ave.
Otherwise, we ended up with at least three different versions of the same story — with more than a few inconsistencies among them.
Agnew said he and Hellamns left the store after it became clear the liquor store owner was immediately ready to call the police. The owner Hasu Patel said his staff called the police after Agnew kept returning and screaming at people in the store.
Agnew said he stepped toward an officer to start talking to him and then did not resist when police began to arrest him. Police spokesperson David Hartman said Agnew “lunged at an officer” and then “violently resisted arrest.” Hartman said Agnew was warned before he was pepper-sprayed and did not comply with officers’ demands that he stop resisting.
Agnew said police hit him at the top left side of his head and his arm. Officer Hartman said the officer struck Agnew on his bicep with his baton.
(Hellamns also said police took her camera as she took a video of Agnew’s arrest. Police denied that claim.)
Camelle Scott-Mujahid, an activist who was present at the rally, sent me a Facebook message expressing her concerns that the article was not discerning about what details it included. She asked us to consider whether including Agnew’s arrest record in the article merely upheld a narrative that Agnew deserved to be pepper-sprayed by police. The most obvious pressing question journalists should seek to answer, she said, is: “Was the level of force used by police justifiable?”
Language unrelated to the story could be used to justify the abuse, instead of focusing the story on whether the alleged use of force was warranted for the situation, she said. One of those details, in her opinion, is Agnew’s arrest record.
We included in the article the existence of Agnew’s arrest record, which police supplied us with, stating had been arrested multiple/several times. We also checked his record on a state database and found out he was out on bond for a sexual assault charge.
Scott-Mujahid wrote: “Especially given the fact that African-Americans and particularly African-American men are much more likely to have a criminal record due to constant harassment at the hands of the police. And the fact that the criminal record was not part of the story and the police didn’t know he had a criminal record when they abused him. If he’s done his time, his past shouldn’t be used against him.”
Commenter Brian L. Jenkins co-signed Scott-Mujahid’s comment that we should not have included the arrest record: “The individual’s prior criminal history has nothing to do with what was alleged to have happened in this instance.”
Other commenters used that detail to conclude that Agnew was in the wrong or generally not a trustworthy source.
Another major decision was how to incorporate claims by Beverage Boss owner Patel that Agnew had yelled at his staff: “Goddamned Indians. You come in here to this country and own the gas stations and the liquor stores.”
The commenter “beaverhills” wrote: “As a white person who shops somewhat regularly at the Beverage Boss, I have definitely noticed differences in the way the staff treats me and African American customers. While it is possible that they have asked me for ID before when using credit card, they certainly do not every single time, and I have observed that they are friendlier to me and my husband than they are to African American patrons.”
Other commenters said Agnew, who is black, should not have yelled racial comments at the Indian storeowner. They debated whether the issue Agnew and Patel argued — whether he could use his ID and another person’s debit card — had merit.
How did we choose which details to include and which to leave out?
It’s important on a story like this to give everyone the chance to comment, said Paul Bass, Independent editor, who shares a byline with me on the story for reporting Patel and the police statements. “I thought it was important that the storeowner get to give his side, including alleged racism,” he said.
It’s clear that by giving us Agnew’s arrest record, police are trying to “hurt his credibility and justify their actions,” Bass said. Agnew’s arrest “in no way justifies alleged mistreatment of him, but it does contribute to the full story as we try to assess everyone’s credibility.”
The story quotes former high school classmate and Upper Westville Alder Darryl Brackeen defending Agnew’s character and doubting he would cause trouble beyond “talking.” So it would be “dishonest” to just include that side of the story, Bass said.
I think we should also ideally have more context to the arrests, when deciding whether to include them. Eight prior arrests for disorderly conduct and resisting arrest, mirroring this one, would arguably be more relevant than eight prior arrests for urinating in public or loitering.
“There’s a long history of reporters sympathetic to critics of police — I’ve been an offender in this regard — presenting victims as pure people who would never do anything wrong when in fact stories get more complicated than that. Sometimes the stories end up being quite naive and even wrong in retrospect when more information comes out,” Bass told me.
Similarly, he said, reporters who also have good relations with police can be used to present arrest records as a way to cast doubt on an alleged victim’s credibility. And the Independent usually does not name arrestees based on allegations, but rather on convictions, unless, as in this case, the arrestee chooses to speak out and give his side, too. Bass also said arrests from sexual assault are different from other arrests in which there’s a history of black defendants being unfairly accused by police; a victim usually needs to come forward to present a sexual assault charge, and often victims feel pressure not to.
I also made a mistake in an early (unpublished, unedited) draft of the article, writing that the video “clearly showed” police taking the camera phone away from the woman being arrested, when in actuality, it did not. “Jumping to conclusions about facts can in fact hinder the cause of bringing out the truth and holding police accountable,” Bass said. Long-term it does not help anyone to report a one-sided story, he said.
The video does show how an officer addressed the video-taking woman he eventually arrested: “Get the fuck out or you get locked up too!” Some people argued we shouldn’t have published the video because it didn’t show the full story. We felt it did show some of what happened, in a way that straight text-reporting wouldn’t.
The police department almost daily releases an account of the arrests that take place around the city, in many instances including officers’ names. But in controversial cases (like this one) it does not release the names.
The police account of this arrest did not mention the fact that Agnew had to be taken to the hospital, nor that Hellamns was at all involved, let alone arrested.
I am the Independent’s education reporter, not the cops reporter. I called in my editor to help with the story because I don’t have working relationships with any officers.
Independent reporter Markeshia Ricks, who often covers police matters, said reporters enter a story at the nexus of intersecting perspectives. In most cases we are listening to the secondhand telling of stories from varying points of view. Our job is to ask as many questions and get as much documentation to determine the veracity of the stories that people are telling so that we can deliver the most complete story to our readers that we can in a very short amount of time.
In this situation, you have cops, who are hyper-vigilant that the decisions they make out on the beat each day can put a career on the line with an accusation of police brutality. On the other hand you have a victim and activists who want to hold police officers accountable for how they treat the people they are sworn with protecting and serving regardless of whether the cop is having a bad day or is afraid of the person they’re arresting.
When we hold back an arrestee’s name, which is our policy unless that person comes forward to talk with us (with the exception of public figures), cops accuse us of protecting that person. When we tell too much of a person’s past criminal history, we’re accused of making the person look bad.
“Our role is not to be activists or proponents, bolstering the image, authority or agenda of any of the people in the story,” Ricks told me.
As we continue to report this story, and future cases alleging police misconduct, we want to make sure we are presenting trustworthy accounts of facts and analysis, while staying accountable to our readers and community.
Very interesting article.
Did any of the arresting officers have any prior complaints filed against them or involvement in other controversial arrests? If they did, would NHI have included those complaints in an article in the same way that the arrestees past was included?