JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC

There’s a hero in this sordid, maddening Chicago case where a cop with a history of abusing citizens executed 17-year-old Laquan McDonald, who was jogging away from him, small knife in hand, and could easily have been brought down with a taser, or less.

The cop isn’t the only coward in this case, though. There are at least two others: Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez, who charged Officer Jason Van Dyke with first-degree murder only after a judge had ordered the video to be released, and Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who participated in the conspiracy because he was afraid the video’s release earlier might have cost him re-election.

Sadly, Emanuel, who was once President Obama’s right-hand man, showed that expediency and opportunism are more important to him than justice and the public welfare.

(A New York Times commenter, “Robert” from Minneapolis, said this about Emanuel: “Such a slimy mess. The mayor should go. The big Chicago Democratic machine did whatever it could to hide the truth. I wonder what is going through Obama’s head, as he reflects upon his sleazy former chief and the Chicago machine?”)

Several other cover-up artists are likely in the mix, including the person or persons responsible for making more than an hour of video from a nearby Burger King disappear without a trace.

…But, like I say, there’s a hero here. And not surprisingly it’s a journalist.

Freelance writer Brandon Smith pushed for months for release of the damning video and finally took the police department to court. If he hadn’t done that — and hadn’t won — who knows what would have happened with this case? It may well have been enveloped in that big cloud of bad-cop cases that just seem to drift away.

Now, Officer Van Dyke probably won’t be convicted of first-degree murder, even though McDonald wasn’t threatening him and he shot the young man 16 times. Laws give police a lot of discretion when it comes to determining if they feel they are in danger when they confront lawbreakers.

But in this case, the city has already admitted culpability, having settled with McDonald’s family for $5 million after their lawyers obtained a copy of the video (long before it was released publicly). And I think it’s very likely a judge or jury will convict Officer Van Dyke of voluntary manslaughter, at the very least, and that he will go to prison.

But back to Smith…He has a blog called muckrakery! and on the blog describes himself as a journalist who is based “wherever my suitcase sits.” His journalistic mission, his blog says, is to answer the question “what the hell is going on here, really?”

Brandon Smith

That’s precisely the question that spurred him to push the pedal to the metal on the Chicago case. On a recent Chicago TV talk show, he said he got interested in the case last April and contacted an activist named William Calloway, who said the video should be released. Smith and Calloway then filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOI) request for the video.

After getting stonewalled for four months, Smith contacted a lawyer, who filed suit in August. (I don’t know what the arrangement was with the lawyer — whether Smith paid out of his pocket, someone else paid or the lawyer took the case pro bono.)

On the talk show, Smith said several “big news organizations” had also filed FOI requests but had not pressed the issue. “I wondered why didn’t they ask their lawyers to sue for this,” he said.

Good question…And here’s the answer. As corporate journalism has tightened its grip on metropolitan dailies, and as newspapers have lost significant ground to the Internet, fewer newspapers have been willing to spend what it takes to hold public entities and officials to account. (I focus on newspapers because they have traditionally been the organizations, much more than TV stations, to sue for access to records or violations of open meetings laws. When I was with The Star, I saw firsthand how interest faded in spending money to hire lawyers when journalistic principles cried out for it.)

The New York Times is about the only paper — and, not coincidentally, one of a handful of remaining family owned dailies — that will spend big bucks to hold public officials accountable. But this was a Chicago case, so I’m not surprised The Times didn’t get involved. The Chicago Tribune should have been the organization to sue, but it didn’t. Again not coincidentally, the Tribune has lost more ground to corporate journalism than probably any other paper in the country.

So, it was up to a freelancer — a David with a slingshot — to challenge the city of Chicago. And he got ’em right between the eyes.

Now, flush with his recent success, Smith is pushing further. In a Dec. 1 article on the Daily Beast website, he said:

“But I’m not stopping there (with release of the video). With the help of attorneys, I’m continuing my Freedom of Information Act request of the city to release officer statements made to investigators, emails from city officials, and more. The public needs to know what as many as eight officers did immediately after the shooting, as well as how the department handled what should’ve been plainly seen as murder by one of its own officers that night.”

Bravo for Brandon Smith, a previously unheralded journalist, whose tenacity brought to the surface a story that could help stem police overreactions to challenging situations.