Why Does WaPo Protect Identities of Cops Who Tased a Shackled, Mentally Ill Woman Until She Died?
Why Does WaPo Protect Identities of Cops Who Tased a Shackled, Mentally Ill Woman Until She Died?
By Jim Naureckas
Apr 13 2015
[font size=1]
The Washington Post knows who gave Natasha McKenna repeated high-voltage shocks just before she
suffered a fatal heart attack–but it isn’t telling its readers.
[/font]
The Washington Post (4/11/15) ran a troubling story about an African-American woman who died after Fairfax County, Virginia, sheriff’s deputies repeatedly used a taser on her while she was already in shackles. The deputies administered four 50,000-volt shocks to Natasha McKenna, a prisoner at the Fairfax County jail who had been diagnosed with schizophrenia, in an effort to force her into a chair for transport; minutes later, her heart stopped.
As law enforcement experts questioned by the Post noted, the incident raises questions about “why a taser was used on a restrained woman, how many times she was shocked and whether handling a mentally ill person with such force was the best approach.”
But the people who actually inflicted the shocks on McKenna were protected from such questions by the Post‘s reporting, because, as the article by Tom Jackman and Justin Jouvenal noted:
The Post is not naming the deputies involved because they are the subject of a criminal investigation and no ruling has been made on McKenna’s cause of death.
Regardless of whether the deputies are indicted or not, they are public employees under whose custody a community member died; it’s unclear why the public has no legitimate interest in knowing who they are.
More:
http://fair.org/home/why-does-wapo-protect-identities-of-cops-who-tased-a-shackled-mentally-ill-woman-until-she-died/
= new reply since forum marked as read
