The Washington Post published a story Wednesday about a 26-year-old black man in Chicago killed following a shootout with police last month. Readers have to scan eight paragraphs under the headline, “Police fire 96 shots in 41 seconds, killing Black man during traffic stop,” before learning bodycam footage indicates Dexter Reed fired first, wounding an officer.
“Dexter Reed’s mother remembers the last time she saw her son alive. ‘Mom, I’m going for a ride,’ he told her, before heading out in the car that he had purchased just three days earlier,” the Post’s story began. “Reed, 26, was killed that same day, when tactical-unit police officers fired 96 bullets at him within 41 seconds, according to Chicago’s Civilian Office of Police Accountability, or COPA, which investigates allegations of police misconduct and police shootings.”
Readers had to keep scrolling to find “COPA said its review of the footage and initial reports ‘appear to confirm that Mr. Reed fired first,’ hitting one officer while four others returned fire.”
It wasn’t just the Washington Post that ran with the hysterical headline highlighting 96 shots before presenting any evidence Reed shot at police first. CBS, CNN, and USA Today each framed the shooting as another episode of police misconduct. USA Today omitted Reed’s provocation for the first three paragraphs.
“It ended with Reed, 26, being gunned down on a residential corner by Chicago police officers who fired nearly 100 rounds in less than a minute,” the Gannett paper reported in its article’s second paragraph.
Neither CNN, USA Today, nor the Washington Post noted that Reed fired 11 rounds at the officers. His shots “almost kill[ed] an officer,” said Chicago Fraternal Order of Police President John Catanzara. The police shot back. Reed “continued to fire at the officers while they were firing those 90 rounds,” Catanzara noted.
The online crowdsourcing site GoFundMe has platformed a fundraiser for Reed and has raised nearly $5,000 as of this article’s publication. The same online fundraising platform shut down a similar campaign for Kyle Rittenhouse in 2020.
“GoFundMe’s Terms of Service prohibit raising money for the legal defense of an alleged violent crime,” the company wrote in a statement following Rittenhouse’s jury acquittal on all charges a year after summer riots in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
Rittenhouse was charged with first-degree reckless homicide, two charges of first-degree reckless endangerment, first-degree intentional homicide, and attempted first-degree intentional homicide after he shot three rioters who advanced on him. A jury found Rittenhouse fired in self-defense as a mob tore down the Midwestern city in response to the police shooting of Jacob Blake. Blake had been armed with a knife, accused of domestic violence, and had struggled with police before police shot him.
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