Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Power in the hands of the Police

My news article titled "Police Shooting of Mother and Infant Exposes a City's Racial Tension" was written about a town called Lima in Ohio. This article presents a lot of information about the culture in the city and how diverse it is. What is interesting is that 27% of the community is African American yet out of 77 police officers, only 2 are African American. Because of this and many other issues Blacks feel gained up on by the police officers. These police officers execute their power in a racist way and now Blacks are taking a step forward. 
The article mainly focuses on the community and racial issues but the final straw was when Ms. Wilson was shot and killed for an unknown reason. Her baby was also shot and injured. The Police broke into Ms. Wilson's home with the intent of arresting her companion, Anthony Terry, for drug dealing. The community has done protests and held marches in response to what they think was a shooting because of her race. This news write-up really talks about the racism in the town and how it is only getting worse. 


What I do know about their culture is that it is very diverse but that does not mean everyone gets along. The majority of police officers do not live in Lima; they live in farm towns outside of Lima. What I would like to know is how these towns are segregated by neighborhoods. I would also need a lot more information from the police on how Ms. Wilson was shot. There are many questions a fieldworker would need to gather and I think a lot of them will come from either the Police or the neighbors of Ms. Wilson. The fieldworker would need to know more about other acts of racism from the police that can be further investigated. I think as a fieldworker I would study the other races within Lima and see how the Police treat them.

The fieldworker would need to go all around Lima and maybe even look at the farm towns where most Police live. This could explain how they have grown up and why they use power the way they do. There is a lot of information that could be further investigated as a fieldworker but as a journalist I feel like they did a great job at explaining the culture of Lima.

1 comment:

Mr. Barnette said...

Good analysis. This is certainly a rich issue to explore culturally.