WJLA’s Wildest Police Videos
We don’t often dabble in local news here, but last night’s WJLA newscast carried one so bizarre we couldn’t pass it up:
The ABC affiliate, owned by Allbritton Communications, reported that it had filed a complaint with the Prince George’s County Police alleging excessive force (in addition to just plan bizarre-ness) was used against its Investigative Reporter Andrea McCarren during an April felony traffic stop.
The incident, which the station says “may be the only recorded felony traffic stop of a reporter who was in pursuit of a story,” began during morning rush hour on April 15th when McCarren and her photographer were surrounded by nine Prince George’s County and Cheverly police cars and up to a dozen officers with their weapons drawn.
The station reports that McCarren–a 5-foot 4-inch mother of three–and her photographer were at the time following a County police official on a tip about the possible misuse of a county car and were apparently presumed by the subject of their investigation to be a threat to his life. The unarmed and cooperative McCarren suffered a partially dislocated shoulder from being “manhandled” by police during the stop.
The incident was caught on the photographer’s video camera, but WJLA is now going public with it because the County is refusing to hand over documents and cruiser videos documenting what happened.
UPDATE: A terrible cynic asks whether holding the story might have had anything to do with the fact that a big difference between reporting what happens on April 15th nearly a month later on May 12th is that the latter is in the middle of sweeps and the former isn’t. Do you really think that local television would manipulate a juicy story to boost ratings during a critical time for advertising rates? What is this world coming to???
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Nadine Cheung
Editor, The Job Post
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