Friday, May 22, 2009 | Opinion
SHAME ON MAYOR SHIRLEY FRANKLIN AND THE ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION
The AJC, which has conducted itself so unethically, owes Sgt. Kreher an apology.
Let’s talk about what Atlanta Police Department Sgt. Scott Kreher said.
All of it.
Not the incomplete quote published by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Not the sound bite being circulated by Mayor Shirley Franklin with so much false alarm.
I was at that meeting at City Hall on Wednesday, May 20. I took notes while the Atlanta City Council grilled Sgt. Kreher for two hours. He answered all of their questions and dispatched their every accusation and excuse. But when it came to the five officers disabled in the line of duty who I wrote about for our May 17th edition in the story “Badges, Bullets, and Broken Promises,” Kreher lost his temper.
I can’t blame him. While I worked on that story, I often broke down in tears. I spent time with those officers. I heard their stories. You can read about them at http://www.sundaypaper.com/More/Archives/tabid/98/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/4062/Badges-bullets-and-broken-promises.aspx
Unlike all those who are now screaming about how uncivil it was for Kreher to say that when he thought about Franklin’s treatment of those officers it made him want to take a baseball bat to her head, I know what prompted his anger, because I felt it, too. If you had seen what I saw, if you had sat in the room with these cops who cried over the shame of being hidden away, ignored and intentionally denied the medical care they need by Mayor Shirley Franklin, you would be mad as hell, too.
The city holds highly-publicized memorial ceremonies for cops who are killed in the line of duty. Yet, Franklin hides those who are disabled in the line of duty because she doesn’t want the world to know what her administration has done to them. Her message is clear: She prefers dead cops to disabled cops.
Franklin’s administration repeatedly refused to fix the injured police officers’ wheelchairs. Franklin’s administration dangerously delayed approving the oxygen Detective J.J. Biello needed because he has 20 percent lung capacity after being shot in the lung during a scuffle where he protected restaurant workers from a robber. Franklin’s administration refused to pay for the migraine prevention medication that Officer Patricia Cocciolone has had to take since she was shot in the head at point blank range by the guy who murdered her police partner. Franklin’s administration cancelled the CT scan of Sgt. Ryan Phinney delaying removal of his kidney stones so that he endured four days of terrible pain, until he finally resorted to an emergency room. Franklin’s administration finessed a van deal for Detective Richard Williams—without his input—and it turns out the van was used and merely jerry-rigged for someone with a wheelchair so it had improper ventilation, so Williams, who was shot by a juvenile criminal 22 years ago and has been paralyzed ever since, wound up with pneumonia caused by exposure. Detective Bob Buffington, who is paralyzed like Williams, Biello, and Phinney, needs special support hose to prevent phlebitis and edema. The city refuses to pay for them, though Buffington took a bullet for the city in its war against drug thugs.
And Franklin has known about them for years and has done absolutely nothing to rectify her administration’s treatment of them. She has so far refused to meet with them.
I published the story about them on May 17, within a couple of weeks of when I was tipped off about it. Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter Tim Eberly was given the story by some of the cops involved in January—and he never wrote a word about it. Not one syllable about what Shirley Franklin did to these officers. Instead, Eberly produced a puff-piece in the AJC about how Cocciolone is planning to write a book. It appeared April 27 in the paper’s “Where Are They Now?” column.
And then, after Sgt. Kreher had the courage to stand up for his officers in that City Council meeting and take the heat for two hours, enumerating carefully and articulately all the problems in the APD and how the Council can help alleviate them, AJC reporter Eric Sturgis produced a 150-word piece solely about the baseball bat remark.
Why hasn’t the AJC reported on the disabled officers? Why did their reporter sit for several months on the notes the injured officers and their advocates gave him and then publish only the snippet about the baseball bat? What does the AJC have against cops? What does it hope to gain from Shirley Franklin? Why does the AJC continue to conduct itself as if it is the public relations department for Mayor Shirley Franklin?
What Franklin has done is tantamount to criminal neglect of these officers. What she has done—not said, because she will not even talk about these officers—what she has done is far more shameful than any baseball bat comment.
Kreher has apologized for the comment, and I think that’s appropriate. But his apology doesn’t in anyway mitigate the truth of the situation that prompted his anger and frustration: Franklin has known about these officers and the disgraceful treatment by her administration’s risk management officer for years and she has done nothing to fix the problem.
And the AJC has had her back. Its reporter deep-sixed the story that would have reflected negatively on her, and then the AJC neglected to report the context regarding those disabled officers when it reported on Sgt. Kreher’s baseball bat remark. What’s going on with the AJC and Shirley Franklin?
After the AJC tapped the mayor’s office for a response to an out-of-context remark, a patently unethical thing to do, as any journalism professor will tell you, and the story was picked up by the Associated Press so Kreher could be dragged through the mud nationally, the AJC finally assigned another reporter, Mike Morris, to talk with Kreher about the real issue: the city’s treatment of the officers’ workers comp claims. Morris did a fine job of clearly and cleanly writing about the technical aspects of the situation—but the AJC had already done its damage to a great police officer and a man who truly cares about his fellow cops.
This morning the AJC finally published a comment from an injured officer supporting Kreher. But you can see even more of that support on my blog entry yesterday from Sgt. Ryan Phinney. I also know that the AJC has Bill Torpy, who is probably the best reporter and writer in Atlanta, working on a story about the disabled cops and their workers comp claims right now for its Sunday edition. That’s great. But the damage has been done.
That is the awesome and sometimes unfortunate power of the press. If reporters and editors do not conduct themselves ethically, if they bury stories that do not reflect well on their pet politicians as the AJC buried the disabled cops story and its implications for Mayor Franklin for five months, if they quote people out of context, and devote only 150 words to a two-hour round of question and answers between the City Council and the police and spend all 150 words on one comment, they can destroy a man, they can provide cover for bad politicians, they can diminish the validity of the claims of police officers who have been paralyzed for the rest of their lives because they took the fall for the citizens of Atlanta.
But then again, it was the AJC that took the side of Franklin against the citizens of the city when they began decrying the rise in crime in their neighborhoods last fall.
I don’t wonder anymore why the AJC has lost so many readers. No redesign in the world can save a paper that has its heart in the wrong place and its head co-opted by City Hall. I also no longer care about the people who refer to my paper as a second rate rag. This second rate rag had the testicular fortitude to run with a story the AJC’s reporter wouldn’t touch.
Here is what Sgt. Kreher actually said: “And this latest fiasco with the disabled officers,” he said, “These five officers were injured in the line of duty…I want to beat her [Mayor Franklin] in the head with a baseball bat sometimes when I think about it. I cannot believe Mayor Franklin’s administration would allow this to happen. This administration should be ashamed of itself.”
It should. And the AJC, which has conducted itself so unethically, owes Kreher an apology.