Waiting for the Facts or Hiding from Them?

In the post from Pete Guither that I referenced below, Pete makes the point that building up good relationships with the media is an essential part to bringing about real change in this country's marijuana laws. Those of us who follow this issue closely can be a great asset to any good reporter who has some interest in digging beneath the surface and asking the tough questions. On the other hand, there are reporters who just don't care. To demonstrate the latter, Kerry Dougherty writes a column about the case of Ryan Frederick, the Virginia man who is being charged with the murder of Chesapeake police officer Jarrod Shivers.

As Radley Balko has noted, the coverage of this case from the Virginian-Pilot has been very good so far, but Dougherty's column appears to a frantic reaction to the growing support there is out there for Frederick, who maintains that he had no idea he was shooting at a police officer, and now has the strong support of friends and neighbors. Sticking to the typical script, she starts her column with a straw man:

RYAN FREDERICK is no hero, no matter what they're saying about him on the Internet.

I have no idea who's saying that Ryan Frederick is a hero, but the reality here is that Ryan Frederick was (and still is) a victim. The police raided his home based upon faulty information (they mistakenly believed he was growing marijuana plants) that the police failed to confirm before knocking down his front door after dark. His decision to shoot at the intruders may not have been the smartest thing to do at that point in time, but considering he'd already had a break-in earlier in the week, his actions were certainly somewhat understandable.

Dougherty continues:

In a jailhouse interview, Frederick said he was in bed when the police came to his door about 8:30 p.m. Awakened by his barking dogs, Frederick said, he thought his house was being invaded. He didn't know the police were the cause of the commotion, he said.

Even so, it's troubling that a man charged with first-degree murder - for allegedly killing a cop, no less - has generated an ardent fan club.

His "fans," though, aren't just random people on the internet. They are his family, friends, and neighbors, who Radley Balko interviewed this past week. To ignore this fact isn't an accidental oversight, it's a way to intentionally distort the nature of Frederick's support. I'm not going to speculate on why Dougherty is doing this, but having followed drug war news for as long as I have, it's certainly not the first time I've seen it.

Supporters of Frederick staged a demonstration outside the jail on Saturday. Some protesters carried "Free Ryan" signs.

Oh, please. Ryan Frederick is right where he belongs - in jail.

At Frederick's bond hearing on Thursday, prosecuting attorney Paul Ebert said that he was "potentially a danger to society," and he was denied bond. Frederick has no criminal record and has shown no signs of dangerous behavior in the past. He is well respected by his neighbors. He shook and wiped away tears as he sat in the courtroom. Anyone who is not capable of recognizing the injustice of keeping him behind bars before the trial simply isn't trying.

Even so, some are begging the system to spring him, fueled by the half-truths and outright lies spreading through cyberspace that portray Frederick as a "drug war victim."

Dougherty does not name any of these half-truths or lies, nor does she present any evidence that contradicts anything that I've seen reported by Balko or others, none of which contradicts anything reported in the Virginian-Pilot itself. She also seems to completely ignore the fact that - had Frederick not fired his gun and simply stood idle as the police raided his home - he was already a "drug war victim" the second the police barged into his home on the belief that the Japanese maples he was growing were marijuana plants. The fact that he shot Shivers does not mean that he's no longer a "drug war victim." It just means that this sad situation now has additional victims.

At the end of her column, Dougherty has some words for drug law reformers:

Since the shooting, there's been a lot of grumbling about Virginia's drug laws and efforts to enforce them.

If you believe marijuana should be legal, call your state legislator and demand that it be decriminalized. Don't blame the cops for enforcing Virginia's laws.

Obviously, I hope this horrible incident raises the awareness of more people to the dangers of the drug war and the senselessness of having police officers (and oftentimes heavily armed SWAT teams) conducting night time raids in order to catch suspected drug dealers off guard. But this isn't a matter of simply enforcing Virginia's laws. This is about a police department that is very clearly cutting corners when lives are potentially at stake. One can easily think of a number of ways in which Chesapeake police could have investigated whether or not Frederick was really a drug dealer before knocking down his front door. This situation wasn't dangerous because Virginia's laws made it dangerous. This situation was dangerous because the Chesapeake police department made it dangerous. And it's irresponsible for any reporter to miss this distinction, especially as she chastises those who know quite a bit more about these types of cases.

I don't know if Ryan Frederick is guilty of murder or of anything else. Neither do you. None of us has all the facts.

So here's a thought: What do you say we all hold our fire until the defendant goes on trial?

We certainly don't know all the facts in this case yet. But between Dougherty's unwillingness to properly characterize who Frederick's defenders are and her unwillingness to explore the details of why the raid happened in the first place, she makes it clear who's actually interested in the facts here.

UPDATE: Radley responds as well.