Even in a year of horrific crimes this one stands out.
Marsha Johnson, a 65-year-old retiree, was killed about three weeks ago in the parking lot of a Covington Wal-Mart. Police suspect she was targeted because she was alone at night and thought to be defenseless. Two suspects, a man and a woman, approached her as she loaded her car.
The man snatched her purse. Johnson fought and fell. The suspects escaped in a Honda, running Johnson over as they sped away. Police said she was run over multiple times.
A manhunt was launched.
Covington Police, using surveillance video from the scene, said law enforcement were on the lookout for “a man with a dark goatee who weighs 250 to 300 pounds,” wearing a dark-colored hoodie, blue jeans and white tennis shoes. A woman was in the passenger’s seat of his vehicle as he left the parking lot. They were “possibly Hispanic,” the police said.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution did not publish the “possibly Hispanic” description of the suspects in the initial reports on AJC.com. The AJC will only describe criminal suspects by race when there is enough accompanying detail available to reasonably sketch a specific individual. That’s because race can often muddle instead of clarify who police are seeking.
That sounds counter intuitive. But let me explain our thinking and our process and cite some of the media experiences that shape this policy.
First, there is less value than you might think in describing a suspect’s race.
Keith Woods, author of “The Authentic Voice: The Best Reporting on Race and Ethnicity,” perhaps best explains how race can mislead rather than clarify. Woods, who is now chief diversity officer at NPR, spent years working at The Poynter Institute instructing journalists on best practices for reporting on race.
He says there are different perceptions of what a black, Hispanic, white or Asian person looks like. Black is President Obama, Idris Elba and Muhammad Ali. Hispanic is George Lopez, David Ortiz and Martin Sheen. White runs from Ed Sheran to Al Pacino. And Asian is as broad — and diverse — as Indian-American Kal Pen and Korean-American Ken Jeong.
Woods, who is a African-American with a medium-to-fair complexion, says describing him by race fails to give readers a true picture of what he looks like.
“If you call me black, what image comes up in the mind of the reader?” Woods said. “You have to have something in your mind’s eye for the word to have meaning. You can’t possibly get that right unless you know me. Otherwise, you have to fall back on a stereotype or archetype or an invention of your mind.”
Instead of identifying by race when it’s unclear, we rely on physical characteristics in describing suspects. It’s much more accurate to describe clothing, hair styles and skin color instead of race. The best details are the ones that are truly identifying characteristics such as tattoos and prominent scars. The public gets a much more accurate picture when you can say someone is bald or has long dreadlocks. Whether they have freckles or severe acne. Whether they’re muscular or portly.
“Close your eyes,” Woods asked me in a Friday interview. “If I tell you (a suspect’s) skin is dark brown and he has thick eyebrows and a beard and the person started speaking Arabic that (description) will tell you much more than simply describing someone by race.”
The media, Woods said, is wholly dependent upon law enforcement to provide information about suspects. The challenge, he said, is to push police beyond descriptions of race and to push for as much detail as possible to unearth the information that will be most helpful to the public.
I know firsthand what can happen when vague information about criminal suspects is released to a public rightfully angry about a horrific crime.
I was a college student in 1994, sitting at The State newspaper in Columbia when the newsroom erupted with news that an Upstate mother had been carjacked and a suspect had driven away with her two young children.
The suspect was described as a black man, medium build who was wearing a skullcap. A police sketch artist crafted an image. And black males in Union County South Carolina were under suspicion for days, as they were picked up, questioned and squeezed for information that would lead to the recovery of those boys.
Susan Smith, the mother of those boys, had actually driven them into a lake strapped in their car seats. This sensational case, where a crime was staged, isn’t the norm. But it is instructive on how an inadequate suspect description can leave plenty to interpretation, put some segments of the public needlessly at risk and distract law enforcement.
More than 20 years later, it’s far more likely that such a crime would be captured by a video. Increasingly, cities are using surveillance video to aid law enforcement and businesses and homeowners are using video to record what happens in and around their property.
Fortunately, a surveillance camera captured the death of Marsha Johnson. A sketch based on a real image was generated. Turns out the man with a dark goatee who weighs 250 to 300 pounds is fair skinned. His name: Brandon Shawn Smith, which makes the “Hispanic” description questionable at best. I’m not sure he looks like George Lopez or David Ortiz or Martin Sheen.
But eventually we got the best description of what the suspect looks like in the newspaper — his booking photo.
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