So, I have this friend, Jorge--someone I know from my Gifu days in Japan. (I've written about Jorge before on this blog HERE, HERE, HERE, and HERE).
One of Jorge's family members recently made some allegations on Facebook about the officers who killed George Floyd. It was quite serious.
I read the post, and I thought that if these allegations are true, then they should be in the news. I think it's important information, because it illustrates how deep the institutional problems are.
At the moment, however, I don't believe that these allegations have made it outside of their circle of Facebook friends. The post has (as of this writing) been shared 68 times, but it hasn't gone viral yet, and I can't find anything about it in the news media. (I checked with my friend Jorge, and it hasn't been reported in the news.) I'm worried that this important information might get overlooked.
However, with all the misinformation that is being spread on social media nowadays, I should make clear that I don't actually know these people. These are friends of friends.
I find myself in a dilemma. On the one hand, I'm worried that this could be important information that needs to be in the public domain. On the other hand, I don't want to be guilty of spreading misinformation online.
After some internal deliberation, I've decided to go ahead and try to spread this information. I know Jorge, and I trust him. And the emotion behind this story seems to be genuine.
Both of the Facebook posts were on public sharing settings from the beginning, but just to be extra sure I wasn't out of bounds, I contacted the person involved, and she discussed it with her husband and gave me permission to share their posts and use their names.
It would be really great if someone in the media was able to fact check this story and possibly publish it. Does anyone know a guy?
Link to Facebook Post 1
 |
| https://www.facebook.com/applecooker711/posts/10222398618251541 |
Link to Facebook Post 2:
In 2015, we field a complaint on the exact same officers that killed George Floyd. Nothing was ever done. We were told there would be an internal investigation but that clearly didn't happen.I've been trying to work my limited contacts in the media to see if there's anything to be done about this story getting picked up. One of them gave me this advice:
In 2015 officer Derek Chauvin and his partner Tou Thao tried to kick in the front door to our apartment in South Minneapolis. We didn't want damage to the property so we opened the door. Without any explication, Chauvin pulled my husband into the hall, threw him down the stairs and began choking him. As this was happening, officer Thao was holding me back, shut my door so I couldn't see what was happening and begin telling me that my husband would be arrested for resisting arrest. I tried asking where they were taking him but all they told me he was being arrested.
Hours went by where I had no idea what was happening with my husband. He didn't have his phone and I all I thought was he was going die. For sure.
Eventually my husband came back home hours later with no shoes and bloodied up. He had told me that the cops drove him to an empty alley, put on black gloves, covered their badge and beat his ass. He had to beg and plead for his life before they let him go, 30 blocks away from our home and took his shoes.
I have experienced racism in my life before but nothing like this. South Minneapolis is still very much home to me despite the fact that I live in Texas now. I still send my son to Minnesota, specifically South Minneapolis, every summer because his dads family is there. I have uncle's, aunts and cousins there too.
I hate that I have to fear for my husbands life. I hate that he has to fear for his life. I hate that everything goes unheard. I hate these fucking cops that are ruining so many innocent lives. I hate watching my husband go through PTSD and not knowing what I can do to help.
I'm tired of hating and something needs to be done.
Best thing you can do with these is if you think it needs media exposure... Go to the big publications find the writers if the stories for floyd then tweet at them with the link. New york times, cnn, usa today, msnbc etc
I think I'm going to start doing that next.
June 1st, 2020 Update 1: Why I Believe This Story
Having had a day to think about it, I find myself more and more convinced that this story is true.
The reasons are as follows:
* My friend Jorge knows and trusts these people
* The husband and wife are both collaborating each other's story, which at least gives it more credibility than a story made up by a single person.
* They seem to be trusted by the people in their Facebook community and in their comment sections
* The emotions in that video feel real. I believe the man is telling something deeply real and personal to him when I watch the video.
* There's nothing that they would gain by fabricating this story.
* This story was only shared on Facebook. Although the settings were public, there was no attempt by the couple involved to get this to go viral or to gain fame by it. They did not go to the media. It appears before I contacted them, they had no intentions of sharing this more widely.
* A lot of specific details mentioned in the story--in the video, the man mentions which districts the police officers got transferred to as a result of his complaint. Strikes me as unlikely to be made up.
Update 2: Why I Think This Story Matters
I think this story is important because it removes all doubt as to the kind of people Derek Chauvin and Tou Thao are. Up until I saw these Facebook posts, I at least had a small sliver of doubt about the incident. Maybe Derek Chauvin didn't mean to kill that guy. Maybe he legitimately thought he needed to restrain like that for some reason. Maybe he was just a good cop who made a mistake that day, etc.... all of that benefit of the doubt, now completely gone in my mind.
It also illustrates how this is a problem with the system. You can't just say now that the Minneapolis Police force was a good functioning system with just a few bad apples in it. This story means they knew they had abusive racist police officers, and they didn't do anything about it.
It also demonstrates the type of abuse that minorities in Minneapolis experience, and so goes a good way to explaining why the protests blew up as they did.
Update 3: Getting this Story Wider Exposure
So, I've done my best to give this story wider exposure. In addition to writing about it here on this blog, I've posted it on my Facebook page. I've tweeted it--twice. I've emailed my old buddies from the college newspaper days to see who is still working in media, and asked them if the're interested. And I've taken the advice my friend gave me (mentioned above), and tried to tweet this story at people who work in the media and are covering this story. See HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, and HERE. (I don't know what the etiquette is. Are you supposed to just tweet at one reporter, and then give him time to respond? Or should you tweet it out at as many reporters as possible and hope somebody bites?)
So far, no luck. It's time to admit what I've always kind of known anyway--I have very little influence on social media.
I'm disappointed no one has shown interest in this story, but I also have to admit that I whenever I get fixated on something, I have a tendency to lose perspective.--That is, now that I've started the process of trying to get this story more attention, I just continue to tweet it at reporters without stopping to think whether or not I've gone overboard already.
Have I gone overboard on this? If so, let me know in the comments. Or is this legitimately a story that needs to be shared? If so, consider sharing it yourself.
Update June 15, 2020
A few updates on this. On June 2, I messaged Lilian Brown. I wrote:
Since then, however, I still haven't seen this story in the newspapers. I don't know, your guess is as good as mine.
But, I did hear back from some of my old buddies at the college newspaper. Someone messaged the email group, apologizing for not having seen the message. I wrote back on June 12, 2020:
Update: August 7, 2020
Well, the story is finally in the news. See my blog post HERE. I guess my friend was right--it apparently does take a really long time to fact check and prepare the story.
June 1st, 2020 Update 1: Why I Believe This Story
Having had a day to think about it, I find myself more and more convinced that this story is true.
The reasons are as follows:
* My friend Jorge knows and trusts these people
* The husband and wife are both collaborating each other's story, which at least gives it more credibility than a story made up by a single person.
* They seem to be trusted by the people in their Facebook community and in their comment sections
* The emotions in that video feel real. I believe the man is telling something deeply real and personal to him when I watch the video.
* There's nothing that they would gain by fabricating this story.
* This story was only shared on Facebook. Although the settings were public, there was no attempt by the couple involved to get this to go viral or to gain fame by it. They did not go to the media. It appears before I contacted them, they had no intentions of sharing this more widely.
* A lot of specific details mentioned in the story--in the video, the man mentions which districts the police officers got transferred to as a result of his complaint. Strikes me as unlikely to be made up.
Update 2: Why I Think This Story Matters
I think this story is important because it removes all doubt as to the kind of people Derek Chauvin and Tou Thao are. Up until I saw these Facebook posts, I at least had a small sliver of doubt about the incident. Maybe Derek Chauvin didn't mean to kill that guy. Maybe he legitimately thought he needed to restrain like that for some reason. Maybe he was just a good cop who made a mistake that day, etc.... all of that benefit of the doubt, now completely gone in my mind.
It also illustrates how this is a problem with the system. You can't just say now that the Minneapolis Police force was a good functioning system with just a few bad apples in it. This story means they knew they had abusive racist police officers, and they didn't do anything about it.
It also demonstrates the type of abuse that minorities in Minneapolis experience, and so goes a good way to explaining why the protests blew up as they did.
So, I've done my best to give this story wider exposure. In addition to writing about it here on this blog, I've posted it on my Facebook page. I've tweeted it--twice. I've emailed my old buddies from the college newspaper days to see who is still working in media, and asked them if the're interested. And I've taken the advice my friend gave me (mentioned above), and tried to tweet this story at people who work in the media and are covering this story. See HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, and HERE. (I don't know what the etiquette is. Are you supposed to just tweet at one reporter, and then give him time to respond? Or should you tweet it out at as many reporters as possible and hope somebody bites?)
So far, no luck. It's time to admit what I've always kind of known anyway--I have very little influence on social media.
I'm disappointed no one has shown interest in this story, but I also have to admit that I whenever I get fixated on something, I have a tendency to lose perspective.--That is, now that I've started the process of trying to get this story more attention, I just continue to tweet it at reporters without stopping to think whether or not I've gone overboard already.
Have I gone overboard on this? If so, let me know in the comments. Or is this legitimately a story that needs to be shared? If so, consider sharing it yourself.
Update June 15, 2020
A few updates on this. On June 2, I messaged Lilian Brown. I wrote:
Hi Lilian, just wanted to update you on what I've been doing.She replied:
Since I last messaged you, I've been doing my best to get your story shared to a wider audience.
I emailed all my old college friends who worked in newspapers to see if anybody could use it.
There were no takers, but one of them gave the advice that if I thought something needed media exposure, I should check the big publications, find the names of the reporters who were working on the story, and tweet at them.
So on Sunday and Monday I did that. I tried to find the names of the reporters from NBC, New York Times, and USA today who were writing about this story, and sent them tweets with links to your facebook posts.
I also posted your story on my own Facebook page, on my twitter account, and on my blog.
I'm not sure what else to do at this point. I think I may be at the end of my resources. I'm sorry I wasn't able to get more publicity for your story. But I thank you for taking the time to message me back.
Thank you! Interestingly enough I did have someone from NBC New York and the New York Times reach out to me so we will get our story heard.Well how about that? The system does work! I tweeted to NBC and New York Times reporters, and they were in touch with her the very next day.
Since then, however, I still haven't seen this story in the newspapers. I don't know, your guess is as good as mine.
But, I did hear back from some of my old buddies at the college newspaper. Someone messaged the email group, apologizing for not having seen the message. I wrote back on June 12, 2020:
I'm guessing that most people aren't using the same email address that they did in 2002, and that's why I didn't get a reply? Or are the rest of you still out there?And then on the same email group, I got a reply from another friend the same day:
Small update on this story. Someone gave me the advice to tweet the story at reporters for major publications. I tweeted it at USA Today, NYT, and NBC reporters, and NBC reporters and NYT reporters got in touch with the couple involved shortly after.
They have not, however, run the story yet, and at this point it's been a couple weeks.
I'm guessing some aspects of this story didn't withstand factchecking? I don't know though.
I'm on the edges of journalism yet, but nothing that would pick up a lead like that. There would be a lot of fact-checking to happen, yes. That can take time. It wouldn't just be talking to those folks. My guess is every news outlet already had a FOIA out for the officers' personnel records as soon as the Floyd incident happened, and they may be waiting on that still, although one story recently mentioned there had been 17 complaints against the one officer, so who knows. I'm not knee-deep in the details, to be honest.Well, in for a penny, in for a pound (as they say), so I tweeted at some Star Tribune reporters: HERE and HERE. We'll see if anything comes of it.
Anyway, if there's something that can be responsibly reported out of their experience, I don't doubt it will be. The outlets you tweeted to are decent. But probably would look for a major newspaper near where your friends live; reporters there would have better connections (Star Tribune maybe?).
Sorry I didn't reply earlier! :-D
Update: August 7, 2020
Well, the story is finally in the news. See my blog post HERE. I guess my friend was right--it apparently does take a really long time to fact check and prepare the story.
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