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

A recent article The Star published about black drivers getting more tickets than whites has Kansas City Police Chief Rick Smith hot under his dress-blue collar.

The Star’s story, which ran Sunday, May 20, analyzed traffic tickets given to Kansas City residents in 2017 and found “significant racial disparities among those ticketed.”

In a long blog post dated May 23, Smith accuses The Star, in so many words, of treating the Police Department unfairly in the story.

Rick Smith

Smith did not take issue with The Star’s statistics or the assertion that African-Americans got a disproportionate share of tickets. What he strongly objected to was a single sentence in the story:

“Police did not respond to The Star’s request for comments for this article.”

What he objects to specifically is The Star’s refusal to share with the PD the data it analyzed — and the source of its data — so that, in Smith’s words, the PD could have time to review the data and respond appropriately.

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This was a story that two relatively new reporters — Aaron Randle (two years at The Star) and Kelsey Ryan (hired about 15 months ago) — worked on for probably a few weeks. In the business, it’s called an “enterprise” story, meaning it did not spring directly from breaking news but was the product of a decision to examine an ongoing situation that had persisted for some considerable time.

The following two sentences comprise The Star’s jumping off point for its analysis and conclusions:

“Of the traffic tickets given to Kansas City residents, 60 percent went to African-Americans, who make up 30 percent of the population. Thirty-seven percent of tickets went to whites, who make up 59 percent of the population.

“Among Kansas City residents, speeding is overwhelmingly the top traffic offense for all races — except African-Americans. The top traffic ticket charge for African-Americans is ‘state license plate required,’ followed by ‘no insurance’ and then speeding.”

The point of Randle’s and Ryan’s story wasn’t the disproportionate number of tickets given to African-Americans, it was how African-Americans who got numerous tickets could have their lives disrupted and livelihoods put at risk because of the situation.

In the case of a woman who has 26 outstanding tickets, The Star said…

“Her ordeal highlights the hardships faced by thousands of drivers in Kansas City — particularly poor African-Americans suffering from a deluge of problems caused by traffic tickets. The tickets pile up, burying already poor residents under a mass of fines and creating a financial pit few are able to pull themselves out of.”

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Smith — to repeat — didn’t take issue with disproportionate ticketing or how an onslaught of tickets affected individual drivers. He was trained on what he perceived as The Star’s unwillingness to share its data and give the PD a chance to analyze it and then respond.

In his blog, Smith laid out the PD’s side at length. I’m going to quote several paragraphs because I think it’s important to include this chunk of his blog so you can see it in context.

This from Smith:

The Star first contacted Media Unit commander and public information officer Captain Lionel Colón by e-mail at 4:30 p.m. Tuesday, May 15. The reporter stated they’d gotten statistics (they did not say from where), and then asked these questions:

1. Why are African-Americans being assigned tickets at such a disproportionate rate?

2. Why does the 64130 zip code account for such a disproportionate amount of tickets?

3. Some have interpreted this data as demonstrating a pattern of ‘over-policing’ and targeting of AA motorists by the KCPD. What is the department’s response to that?

Captain Colón responded early the next morning asking what the data were so we could review it in order to properly answer their questions. The Star declined to provide the data, other than directing us to public information from Municipal Court. They refused to say with whom they worked at Municipal Court to obtain the data or what kind of dataset they’d requested. Captain Colón said it would be irresponsible for him to speak to the data without seeing it.

Over the next few days, we worked to try to extract our own ticket data from 2017 by race and set up an appointment with leaders at Municipal Court to compare. Captain Colón maintained daily e-mail contact with The Star during that time.

On Friday, May 18, we told the reporter that since we could not see the data The Star used to make responsible and informed comments, we were working to pull the data ourselves. We told him there were several other large-scale public information requests that had been submitted previously from other organizations that – to be fair to everyone – needed to be addressed first. The reporter responded that it was too late, anyway, and the article would run on Sunday.

The Star then reported that KCPD declined to comment, which is false. We requested The Star correct their statement, “Police did not respond to The Star’s request for comments to this article,” and they declined.

Daily e-mail conversation between KCPD and reporters and editors is not a “no comment” situation. “No comment” is not a response that we give. Sometimes we have to protect the integrity of an investigation and can’t say much, and other times – as is the case here – we need more time to review a large amount of information (that wasn’t even made available to us for review). Just to pull that information ourselves took more time than The Star allotted us for making a statement on it.

In summary, The Star reporters gave the police department 2.5 days to respond to reams of data they wouldn’t show us. Members of The Star have had the opportunity to review this data since February 2018, according to Municipal Court.

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You can chew on all that and form your own opinions, but from my perspective there are two main problems:

1. If The Star still had a reporter assigned full time to the Kansas City Police Department, as it did for decades before severe reportorial retrenchment, this “stand-off” probably would not have occurred. The police reporter probably would have been involved in the story, and even if not directly involved, he or she could have functioned as a conduit between the reporters and police commanders. As it is, neither Randle nor Ryan is a police reporter or is in regular contact with KCPD…Randle’s LinkedIn profile describes him as a “features reporter and pop culture writer.” In announcing the hiring of Ryan in March 2017, The Star described her as an “investigative/data reporter.” What that means, basically, is she does a lot of computer-assisted reporting. Perhaps magnifying the communication problem is that Colon is new to the communications office, having taken charge of it just a few months ago.
2. There is far too much reliance on email (and, of course text) communication these days. And I don’t mean just on the reporting front. Email is a valuable tool, but far too many people have made it (and texting) the end-all, be-all of communication. Email communication on sensitive and substantive matters, especially where details are important, opens the way for miscommunication and hardening of positions. It’s far preferable to either pick up the phone and try to talk a situation through with someone or, better yet, arrange to go meet in person and hash things out.

In this case, the blame falls on both sides. It’s simply a situation that should never have occurred.

On the one hand, I’ve had dealings with the Police Department communications office, and those officers almost always want information requests submitted in writing. I can understand that; they want to have a record, for their supervisors, of who requested what. At the same time, someone at HQ should have the good sense to put a halt to back-and-forth emails on a sensitive issues (like the racial dimension of traffic tickets) and pick up the phone and request a person-to-person meeting. One more thing: If the chief didn’t get involved in this until after the fact — and I have no idea how that played out — he should have been.

On the other hand, I suspect that many reporters, not just at The Star but at major papers throughout the country, have come to rely too heavily on electronic communication with sources and subjects. That’s a consequence of having far fewer reporters trying to cover about the same number of “beats” reporters have covered from time immemorial, such as law enforcement, education and local and state government. I understand it’s a lot easier to sit at your desk and fire off an email than it is to pick up the phone and play the “missed your call” game, but, in the end, that’s how you get the best and most precise information and how you come closest to clarifying opposing positions.

This hardening of positions, on this particular story, is just ridiculous…For Christ’s sake, couldn’t somebody at 18th and Grand have called somebody at 12th and Locust and had a fuckin’ chat???

“Daily email conversation,” as Smith described whatever dialogue took place, qualifies in no way, shape or form as a conversation.