Some topics seem to have a life of their own. Readers bring them up year after year, like a slow but persistent – some would say torturous – drip from a kitchen faucet.
Such is the case with how and when The Bee identifies suspects in its crime stories by race.
“Your paper does a great disservice to the community by not providing full suspect descriptions in your stories,” one reader said in an e-mail a few days ago. “How is someone supposed to help the police and identify a suspect when the basic information of the suspect’s race is not disclosed? Can’t you see that this information is vitally important in apprehending suspects?”
Then came the kicker: “In The Bee’s misguided attempt to be politically correct you harm the community.”
That’s a strong charge and one that ebbs and flows but, as I said, never seems to go away.
I think the accusation is wrong and overly simplistic. It also overlooks the equally worrisome and destructive problem of racial stereotyping caused by unreliable or vague racial descriptions provided by crime victims or witnesses.
Let’s be clear: The paper doesn’t have a blanket policy banning the use of race in crime stories. But it sets the bar high.
Racial identifications are allowed when they are included as part of a detailed physical description of a suspect. They also are allowed when describing suspects in serial crimes, even when overall details are sparse, and in police sketches of suspects.
Although the paper updated and refined its racial identification policy last year after much internal discussion – including workshops – each story is still a judgment call by editors working with reporters.
And while I believe the paper is more consistent than ever in following its policy, inconsistencies remain – and always will remain. That’s just the nature of this messy business we call news.
Here is part of what the policy says as explained in The Bee stylebook:
“Race should not be used in a police description too sparse to truly describe someone, but it should be used in a complete description. For example, ‘The suspect was described as a Latino man in his 30s’ is not sufficient to include race. Also ‘A 5-foot-tall African American woman in her 20s wearing shorts and a T-shirt’ is less specific than ‘The suspect is a 6-foot-tall white man in his 30s with a bear tattooed on his left arm and “Zelda4ever” tattooed on his right arm.’ ”
As a practical matter, most reader complaints are generated by short crimes stories that appear in the regional digest in the Metro section. A recent digest story about two men who accosted a group of female joggers at Sacramento State University illustrates how different editors view the same information.
One suspect was described as “5-foot-10, 185 pounds, with athletic build and short brown hair. He was wearing blue jeans and a hooded gray American eagle sweat shirt with pink, green and blue stripes near the sleeve shoulders.” The other suspect was described as “stocky, 5-foot-9, 185 pounds with spiky brown hair. He was wearing blue jeans and a hooded black or dark-colored sweat shirt with lettering.”
For Scott Lebar, the assistant managing editor in charge of Metro, the descriptions fell just short of the standard to include race. “They don’t have that one extra, key identifier,” Lebar said. “This is not an exact science and there will always be close and individual calls.”
Executive Editor Rick Rodriguez looked at the same descriptions and said he probably would have made the decision to include race in the story.
Rodriguez recounts previous stories in The Bee where suspects initially identified as African American turned out to be Latino, or suspects described as Latino turned out to be white or Asian.
And that’s part of the downside in providing racial descriptions that turn out to be wrong or misleading. They provide false crime-solving leads and contribute to racial profiling. Fitting people into accurate, one-dimensional racial categories is also difficult in a multiracial and multicultural state like California.
There is also, unfortunately, an element of racism among some readers who seem more interested in keeping a racial scorecard than in finding a suspect.
“Some callers say they want to find out what race it is that committed the crime,” said Lebar, who has fielded many such calls over the years. “They use the phrase that we are being PC. But if that means I’m trying to be sensitive that the information we provide is accurate, then I’m PC. I suspect their motive is something else.”
Rodriguez said the paper’s threshold for using racial descriptions in crime stories is, “How do you avoid being a victim of a crime or help in the solution of a crime?”
You have to use race, he said, to alert people who might become serial crime victims and to help solve crimes when race is included with an abundance of other identifying details.
But, he said, using racial descriptions when other details are vague doesn’t “help do anything other than appease people who say we’re trying to be PC.”
“Let’s face it. Race is going to be an issue with us (as a society) for a long time,” Rodriguez said. “We have to balance information (in stories) that will be useful to the public but also balance the information so that it doesn’t stereotype or put people in situations that are unfair.
“I know we’re not going to make everyone happy on this,” said Rodriguez. “We just aren’t.”
On that, he can be sure. Like the faucet that won’t stop dripping.
