Crisis in DC:
Health or Politics?
Media
coverage of the latest major traffic incident in DC demonstrates why
mental patients are on the loose. Relatives immediately inquire if
the shooting was necessary. Police admit the patient was unarmed. Has
anybody so far admitted that the patient was armed with a car, and
showed no signs of stopping her aggression until public officials
acted? Then the complaints start over again.
Media
coverage of such incidents can exacerbate misunderstanding. If
reporters echo comments by laypersons without footnoting--at the very
least—that these statements come from parties not trained in
objectivity, they can participate in whooping up outrage. Relatives
also are bound to be on the defensive. Emotionalism turns up at
intersections all too often, usually in the form of road rage.
All
officials involved in such episodes must operate in the theater of
the NOW. Obviously, a suspect does not hand a medical history to
police in hot pursuit as she goes speeding toward public icons of
American history. All quotations from patients, made during a history
of questionable reliability, prove nothing about this suspect's
intent as she accelerates and reverses into police vehicles.
If
such incidents were soap operas, and suspects' faces flashed across
the public's memory banks, then the audience could be expected to get
caught up in instantaneous psychodrama. Villains too quickly occur to
viewers accustomed to applauding and booing their favorite TV stars,
who regularly include the heavy hitters—actors so intense that fans
dub them "the ones we love to hate."
Suddenly
the media may present the unknown quantity roaring down the
street—officially known as an "unsub" in popular crime
dramas—as a character deserving sympathy. For what is a soap opera
without a heroine, too? The truth remains that any party who disobeys
traffic police in DC should expect to be stopped. Since 9/11, is
taking chances with public safety negotiable?
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