Whenever accusations about cops and misdeeds make their way into headlines, most of us either rush to defend them or revile them. Wherever we rush to usually has to do with what camp we most align: either (A) policing is damn hard work and those who do it don’t get enough credit or (B) police officers have enough potentially unchecked power to make us uncomfortable.

Of course, like with most things, the truth manages to be both.

More than a year ago, I wrote about then-Temple University student journalist Shannon McDonald and the contested reporting she did on Philadelphia Police Officer Bill Thrasher. Last month, something of a conclusion was finally met.

In a ride along with Thrasher in his largely poor, black and crime-charged North Philadelphia patrolling district, McDonald quoted Thrasher as saying some incendiary, racially-tinged comments about the neighborhood. Most controversial was his use of ‘TNS,’ which McDonald reported he said meant ‘typical n—– s—.”

After the story went national, Thrasher was briefly put on desk duty and then summarily canned. His union denied ever making the comments, and by way of the city’s Fraternal Order of Police challenged his being dismissed. Months after the appeals hearing, an arbitrator ruled there was insufficient evidence to fire Thrasher.

He’s been reinstated and the conversation — and politicizing — has swelled again.

First, I’ll need all the disclosures I have on this one. Mostly, I’ve had a very close personal relationship with McDonald since 2007. I’m as biased as anyone else discussing the topic, but I’ll try to wade through that.

Knowing McDonald so well and having discussed the topic from before notice ever arose around the story, I know with unfailing confidence that what McDonald reported is accurate. So that isn’t my point or what interests me.

Let’s cast aside that I know her and trust her — and that I don’t know Thrasher.

HE SAID, SHE SAID

Officer Bill Thrasher

Let’s, instead, look back at the premise that a student journalist was on a ride along with a cop.

I’d find completely fabricating such hateful remarks pathological, so, while even taking the harshest look at McDonald and her reporting, it seems fair to accept something was said in the vein that was quoted. (I’d add that student journalists often subscribe to among the strictest of quoting practices, in my experience, because they’re so near to their training and accuracy being among that education’s foundational underpinnings, but generalities aren’t what we need now.)

Once said comments were reported and published, one of the two parties — student journalist and young cop — seems a whole lot more reason to lie.

Truly, I dismiss any notion that the student journalist has motivation to lie from the beginning. The assignment is about getting the story accurate and writing it well. The content isn’t what a student journalist is grading on anywhere near as much as it is graded on accuracy, clarity and form. The most consistent criticism of McDonald has been that she would have used the opportunity to fabricate or exaggerate — that’s ludicrous because it’s not how journalism has ever worked and it certainly isn’t how it works now (McDonald is still building a niche news site, which I’ve worked on, and never got the job all her accusers said she was using her platform to obtain)

But, upon being accused, Thrasher had his entire livelihood at stake.

He thought he was riding with a friend — a native from the Northeast Philadelphia he called home. Someone young and hardly grizzled or intimidating in appearance.

He said something stupid and ignorant — nothing for which I can too harshly blame anyone because I’ve had my share of talking out of turn. It’s important to note here that McDonald never called for anyone’s badge. She just reported what she heard.

Others called for Thrasher’s head. She never ever did — because that’s not the role of the journalist.

THE ARBITRATOR’S DECISION

Though the arbitrator seemed to make clear his distaste for McDonald as a witness — he called her testimony “hostile” –  his role was not necessarily to dictate whether her story was true or not. His job was to mediate between two sides — the police department and its officers’ union — and decide whether there was enough reason to dismiss a cop. (Regardless of whether she turned her notes in or not, which, for the record, she did).

The story hasn’t been deemed inaccurate. We’ve just been reminded that it’s damn near impossible to fire a cop — or keep him fired.

McDonald never called for his firing. She never suggested it. She wrote a feature piece on a cop in a rough neighborhood and tried to encapsulate the experience better by employing the words he used to describe his situation.

I don’t know Thrasher, so I don’t have much anything to say on him, though others have. Truth be told, if he wanted his job — and had a police officer’s union behind him — there was never any question what he would do or say publicly. There was considerably more question as to what McDonald would do, which would corroborate her story in my mind, whether I knew her or not.

CONCLUSION

At least this is as done as it will be for now. Thrasher is back answering phones, as a journalist friend corroborated a few weeks ago. McDonald is still reporting on her community — despite the push back she received.

She’s not a hero. She’s not a villain.

She was a student journalist who wrote a good story that became a heck of a chance to politicize the matter of whether cops are under siege or doing the siege-ing.

So people ran to their sides.

Cops are infallible heroes.

Cops are over-empowered boobs.

In the middle of storms with such emotion, names are called and usually no consensus or truth will ever be much found.

McDonald lost some friends and developed supporters. Thrasher became a rallying cry. Nothing was solved. We just hunkered back into the opinions we all always held and spun the narrative into the truths we wanted.

I wish we’d see this, as with other situations of its kind, as a single instance between specific individuals — and keep quiet on the rest we don’t much know.

Update 11/22/09 @ 12:06 p.m.: Signs of this enforcement from Philebrity and the Inquirer.

Philadelphia police are introducing a bicycle enforcement campaign beginning tomorrow in Center City.

Forgive the lack of a direct focus on journalism, the future of news and my clips on this, but, as someone who uses bicycling transport fairly regularly (to save money and get exercise, something any freelancer would understand the value of making habit), it’s an issue I take seriously.

If you’re down, read some of my perspective and watch a video about police officers in another city using “discretion” with such bicycle street-law enforcement.

Anyone with any interest in urban dynamic will dig the debate, at least. The short of it is that there’s an increasing dependence on the bicycle to commute in Philadelphia — a walkable city and much maligned mass transit agency perhaps adding to the push grown out of other elements — and that’s putting bicyclists at odds with what had been for the past half-century a very dominant car culture of suburban commuters driving into Center City and driving home.

Now, with this new campaign, enforcement of myriad of driving code violations — from running a red light to traveling on a sidewalk or rolling through a stop sign — would ostensibly be taken as seriously with bicyclists as they are with car drivers.

On the Greater Philadelphia Bicycle Coalition blog post about the new campaign, I read a few great points with which I agreed and synthesized, so I thought I’d share them.

1. Motorized vehicles and man-powered bicycles are very different. It seems outrageous that the negative externalities of motorized transport will be ignored in so that bicyclists will be penalized the same as a car driver breaking code.
2. There are absolutely roadways that are unfriendly to bicyclists but have large yet unsused sidewalks — take a trip down Roosevelt Blvd. and much of Frankford Avenue north of Fishtown. Does that not seem outrageous to be fined? If every road has a bike path, then fine, but they don’t. (This campaign mentions a focus on Center City but is it wrong to think it will extend elsewhere if a cop wants to do so?)
3. Let’s reemphasize the difference between a one ton piece of steel that goes no less than 25 mph on city roads and all of 150-200 pounds that can’t exceed 7 mph.
4. What is the enforcement like, as Brendan said. Am I going to be arrested for not having ID and then feeling less than enthused about being forced to give out my name. [Update: City Council man Frank DiCicco has introduced legislation to require a one-time $20 registration fee for bicycle plates.]

Are those totally bogus?

I take seriously giving the right of way, but I absolutely cross red lights and stop signs, something that as a bicyclist I feel more able to do because of my far slower rate of speed. Stop signs and stop lights and the roadway system has been developed over the last 50 years for cars. That doesn’t make sense for a bicyclist, so isn’t there room to let some of this go?

Now, if this is just meant to be an enforcement campaign on the books so that those who drive or ride dangerously can be penalized, then sure, I have nothing to fight about that. But I can’t say that in my four years of riding pretty heavily in Philadelphia that I have too often seen bicylist behavior that warranted $120 fines.

Below watch a video made for Portland, Oregon police department to talk about using “discretion” in enforcing its code.

A photo I took of the police district headquarters where Mayor Nutter spoke yesterday.

For free daily newspaper Metro Philadelphia, today I covered a press conference and related fallout from Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter warning of the Plan C budget he says he’ll be forced to introduce if two provisions aren’t passed by the state legislature.

I wrote a main brief on Nutter’s use of political theatrics: framing the legislative fight by a fight over cops and firefighters, groups that are taken very seriously in the part of the city he made the announcement.

Mayor Michael Nutter surrounded himself with police officers — and the Northeast Philadelphia residents that lean on them — to continue sending his message to Harrisburg yesterday that the city will be in dire straits without action from lawmakers.

Read the rest here. I also wrote a small sidebar item on some reaction from neighborhood onlookers.

Read the related story I wrote for NEastPhilly.com.

Below see some extra material that didn’t make it into either story.

A lede that wasn’t:

• Something Mayor Nutter can still be sure of is police support in Northeast Philadelphia. So he used that certainty yesterday to help him with something far less preordained: Philadelphia’s fiscal stability.

Other

• “We have already been cut by the last budget. I don’t want to see what will happen next,” Tara E. Smith, Germantown resident and community support services staffer of Operation Town Watch
• Faced with a $700 million budget shortfall, Nutter described the “dangerous” effects his Plan C budget could cause
• With that date looming and the state legislature still tangled in a budget debate, Nutter has gone on a publicity blitz.
• Last Thursday, at a City Hall rally, he outlined the new budget he says he would be forced to submit if those provisions aren’t answered.

Jeff Jubilerer, a political consultant with Center City media firm Ceisler Jubelirer.

• “It’s late, but it’s not too late because the budget hasn’t passed. Still, Nutter has no choice but to be using every weapon in his Swiss army knife,” he said. “That what [we] saw today.”
• “There’s probably nothing more powerful than public safety… for a statement.”
• “There’s only so many times in a day that Michael Nutter can say the same thing. He needs some help.”
• He’s a smart guy. He knows where to go. He’s been to Harrisburg numerous, countless times. There’s not much more of that he can do. He needs to bring new voices into the fold to apply pressure.
• No one is against cops. No one is against firefighters or anything that the mayor said will be cut. He’s smart. He’s going to need to break through this clutter and this logjam. What is going to take the state legislature to take up Philadelphia’s call?
• “Nutter to his credit made some reference that maybe he would have approached [the library fight] differently. That shows some learning. He’s not new to the game. Now he clearly has everone in his world with him. In a way he has to make it an us versus them thing, but from a message he can’t piss off the legislature. And he hasn’t. He hasn’t said names. He’s outlined doomsday scenarios and he has been to Harrisburg so much and appears to be doing as much.”
• A David Cohen and Mark Schweiker, Rob Wonderling, these are people who Republicans in the legislature or even Democrats from outside the city might be more likely to listen to than a Philadelphia mayor who might not get the same attention.
• Some of the things are out of his control. The Philadelphia delegation isn’t his problem. Still, everybody cares about police. Let’s get that striaght: people in Bucks and Chester counties do want a safer Philadelphia, it’s just not their only or primary focus.

I seem to recall seeing some petty ugly things written on Domeights, the online forum for the Philadelphia police community that was shut down by its owner after the threat of legal action.

Of course, I also remember a lot of mundane content, jokes, commentary and other arcane back-and-forth that is the staple of most Web message boards. But that’s not going to be the subject.

The site, which is operated by city police sergeant but is unaffiliated with the department, caught heat following another public display of racial infighting in one of the country’s largest municipal law enforcement agencies. The Guardian Civic League, an organized group of black police officers, is calling for the removal of the site and has named a host of individuals, in addition to the police force and the city in a law suit.

But as a police spokesman told CNN, it isn’t a city-ordained site and it appears as though comments weren’t posted during work time. Some question whether as many of the comments were made by cops as others allege.

Blocking the site from city and police computers makes plenty of sense, but I can’t say I’d understand taking down the site. Because I don’t believe shaming someone out of saying something really changes his mind.

This won’t stamp out racism any more than would chasing a white power group underground would. Fight against intolerance in the work place, but I struggle to support chasing down people for saying things from their homes on a Web community, even if I agree anonymously posting ugly, incendiary comments anywhere is hurtful, childish and, well, stupid.

This is part of a much bigger problem in the Philadelphia police force.

Now, of course, many of those who post to Domelights are probably knuckleheads at best or bigots at worst — especially those who threatened the leader of the black police group — but I don’t believe tackling a relatively low-traffic site would do nearly as much good as perhaps helping cops realize why some neighborhoods look the way they do.

Am I missing something?

Update: 7:40 p.m. on April 23, 2009: The involved officer was suspended with intent to dismiss. That news also came from the Inquirer and Daily News.

Update: 10:12 p.m. on May 6, 2009: Ms. McDonald was the feature of a cover story in the Northeast Times.

The attention has probably subsided enough to write this now.

Shannon McDonald, whom I’ve known for nearly two years, got a round of 15 minutes of fame she didn’t quite want.

On March 31, the Philadelphia Daily News ran a story on the growing ire of a group of the city’s black cops.

The controversy surrounded around a single officer, and, it seems, Shannon started it all.

At least a month before, the 21-year-old senior Temple University journalism student had to write a feature story for a class. So, thinking a cop-ride-along would be a simple, strong and fast assignment for a class she’s eager to finish, Shannon contacted the 22nd Philadelphia police district, which covers her assigned Strawberry Mansion neighborhood.

Then she wrote, as would surprise no one who knows her, a tidy, professional 900-word profile on Bill Thrasher, the officer with whom she rode. That was in February. It was a school assignment.

I spoke to her after the ride along.

“How was it?” I asked.

“OK,” she said, in a way that makes me certain she neither expected nor wanted any attention for the story.

It took a month for her expectations to be proven shortsighted.

One of the many remarkable aspects of the Internet is its leveling of hierarchies. There was a time, not so long ago, that class assignments were graded, filed and forgotten. Today, they are legacies.

Shannon filed her story, and it took a month for someone to get mad about it — really mad about it.

I read her story when she first finished it. I was moved by her ability to get the officer to feel comfortable enough with her to speak frankly. In the ensuing aftermath, she was criticized for being deceptive, when, in fact, as any good journalist will suggest, if you can’t get someone, a stranger even, to open up to you, then you aren’t worth shit as a journalist.

Officer Thrasher, of course, as the story goes, certainly did open up to Shannon. He was a white, baby-faced 24-year-old rookie cop working in a neighborhood where 24 is old and young, black boys die, often at the hands of other young, black boys.

Thrasher spoke bluntly — calling some of the neighbors “like animals” — but while the generalizations were alarming, they wouldn’t be surprising to anyone who knows young cops who patrol poor, black neighborhoods. What lurched forward the alarm over the story was Thrasher’s use of a certain term with other officers, including a supervising lieutenant. TNS, he explained to Shannon, with pen and pad, means “typical nigger shit.”

And that’s how media firestorms begin.

The first I saw of it came on DomeLights, which for those of you not fortunate enough to know, is an open, anonymous forum for Philly cops — equal parts enlightening and distressing, true candy for the voyeur at heart. When the Daily News story came out, another DomeLights thread followed — a third came later still, maybe more, I’ve lost track.

At first, the attacks came on Shannon. Those who couldn’t believe a Philly cop would say such comments implied Shannon, just a student journalist, likely fictionalized or at least embellished her quotes.

For those who don’t know the thorough and scrupulous scribe, who serves as her college newspaper’s managing editor, while also maintaining a full-time course load, freelancing for the Wilmington News-Journal and copy-editing for the Fishtown Spirit community newspaper, and has also written for Philadelphia Style, I can understand the indictment.

In time though, the dominant conversation on even the anonymous and often ugly DomeLights forum became what the hell was Thrasher — and his supervising officers — thinking, sending a young cop with a journalist.

Of course, I think the point is that no one saw Shannon as a journalist. She was a kid. To Thrasher, she was likely a kid who also lived in Northeast Philadelphia – the city’s bastion of middle-class whites, chock full of cops and firefighters.

Thrasher said some messed up stuff — there’s no questioning that — but he didn’t say anything beyond what most fear is part of white culture in a big city police department. If he gets canned, it’ll likely be part of a sham attempt by the force to suggest they’ve cleaned up their act.

It’s something a lot darker and bigger than firing 24-year-old Thrasher could solve. Instead, I truly hope Thrasher learns from the experience and gets to return to doing good things on the streets of Strawberry Mansion.  He may deserve all the negative attention he’s getting now, but unless it’s part of a bigger house-cleaning, I don’t think he needs to get tossed on the street. I doubt Shannon, for what it’s worth, thinks he should either. But it doesn’t matter what she thinks. She’s just supposed to write it all down.

And that’s what got her in so much trouble. The media was looking for something like this, as stories of racism and prejudice in Philly’s police ranks have persisted for decades. Shannon became an unwitting face of a movement of which she didn’t want to be a part.

She appeared on Fox29 and, for fear of being criticized for over-exposure, turned down the others, though she ended up on the Web site of one. The Inquirer’s Kia Gregory wrote a story, and she was the feature of a Michael Smerconish column – that followed getting about an hour of attention between his morning and afternoon nationally-syndicated radio shows. Alternative-weekly CityPaper joined the fray. She was written up on Attytood, twice on Philebrity, on the McJawn magazine Web site and on the CityPaper staff blog. They felt it necessary to address the issue in the college newspaper she manages, and that moved to a Temple student-news blog and a Temple journalism class blog. I couldn’t find a link for the Radio Times piece I was told aired on WHYY. That was all capped off by getting the rundown by Inqy columnist Annette John-Hall, who focused more on Shannon being a budding journalist in an age not so kind to them. I think probably among the more accurate, honest and thorough assessments came from a syndicated columnist.

Whether this is the end of police ride-alongs in Philadelphia, I can’t be sure. I did expect a subtle police publicity blitz and, it has already begun.

NBC10, who is getting battered in the city’s ratings, ran a cakewalk piece on April 10, covering new walking beats promoted by the city’s force. Where did the story take place? The 22nd district of course, the same district that was under fire for Thrasher’s comments two weeks earlier. That NBC10 reporter Kristin Walker didn’t make mention of a firestorm that happened in the same district so recently shows a level of unprofessionalism and lack of journalistic integrity that frightens me.

So the police will likely let us forget about it, which has happened before. Shannon’s 15 minutes is all but done, something I suspect she relishes. Still, I think it’s a shame so little was made of the hateful blow back that came Shannon’s way.

The least of it called her naive for writing the story, quoting an officer saying ugly things about the neighborhood he patrols would put him in danger. Of course, as anyone in the industry knows, that’s not quite how it works.

If he felt the need to say something like that but knew the ramifications, a simple “leave this off the record,” would have done fine. Fourteen hundred people have joined a Facebook group supporting Thrasher, and that’s just fine, but I can’t help but find myself a little confounded when folks leave mean spirited comments like the following:

Karma is a bitch. One day she’ll need the police and hopefully they won’t be there to help her.”

That was left by a Tom Thrasher, though I’m not sure of the relation. She received e-mails that were threatening, lewd and argumentative. I won’t even get near to the ugliest attacks of all. She was accused of injecting race into the conversation, though Shannon maintains never doing anything more than writing a story with real quotes from a real person. Nevertheless, the attacks persist.

Of course, that’s just what’s so disconcerting about all of this — that the response from some in the police community is to criticize, condemn or otherwise attack a student journalist, rather than explore just what kind of culture is festering in our city’s police departments.

If that can’t be seen as unhealthy, we have a much larger problem.

Now, of course, this is a gosh darn wet dream for just about any self-respecting young journalist — hell, for any journalist. Well, not exactly for Shannon.

She’s growing an online community news portal for her native Northeast Philadelphia, held at NEastPhilly.com. Her Q&A post on fellow NEaster Arthur Kade got links from the likes of Philebrity and Gawker. Next month, she’s hosting a panel discussion of city controller candidates.

It would be a troubling time for white, cop-supporting Northeast natives to refuse to patronize what is already the best source of Northeast news online. Particularly for so little. A young, native Northeast Philadelphia reporter doing nothing more than writing down what someone said and reporting it.

So you might understand why she’d be frustrated by a discussion board entitled “Boycott NEastPhilly.com.”

She didn’t sound the bell. She didn’t call for Thrasher’s head. She quietly and responsibly filled her story. We are in a bad place if that becomes something to criticize.