It's awful that the Reading Eagle suggests local police are being targeted without really checking

by Steve Reinbrecht

It appears that assaults on police officers are increasing around here, Reading Eagle claims in a story Friday, Sept. 4.

That’s a provocative statement in light of national current events.

The Eagle says: “It's unclear if assaults on police officers are increasing, but anecdotaly, at least, that appears to be the case.”

Isn’t it a newspaper’s job to clarify the “unclear”? How hard did reporters try to find out? Why can’t the newspaper nail down this provocative claim a little more tightly? It’s easier to do a lame job, even though bad journalism on such an extremely sensitive subject will just make things worse.

This Eagle article brandishes the same bad logic that the worst populists do by holding up anecdotes – Willie Horton! – knowing that uneducated people will make the fallacious leap.

Don’t police departments keep records of assaults on officers? If the Eagle can list the salary of every municipal weed-whacker in Berks, it might be able to check on this.

Why not ask if such attacks are in fact rising? The Eagle not only fails to fact-check, but doesn’t bother reporting facts in the first place.

Of course being a police officer is a rough job. They need to insert themselves into the most dangerous situations. That’s always been a part of the profession.

"There are times when people you're interacting with escalate the situation needlessly," Fleetwood Police Chief Steven J. Stinsky tells the Eagle. "It's something you've got to deal with and you've always had to."

So what’s the news?

The Eagle lists a handful of local incidents -- four in a week, from Myerstown to West Penn Township in Schuylkill County; four among a population of about 500,000.

Connecting those to atrocities where criminals are targeting officers turns my stomach.

Stinsky said he's “noticed a decline in respect for authorities.”

“This undercurrent, he believes, has contributed to well-publicized fatal shootings by police officers of suspects around the nation.”

If that’s really happening in Berks, the Eagle should dig up the numbers.

Otherwise, such bad journalism just makes problems among police and residents worse.

Last year, 51 law enforcement officers were feloniously killed in the line of duty in America, a steep rise from the 27 officers killed in 2013. The FBI released the numbers in May.
From 1980–2014, an average of 64 law enforcement officers have been feloniously killed per year. The 2013 total, 27, was the lowest during this 35-year period.