Radiolab - Shots Fired: Part 2

A couple years ago, Ben Montgomery, reporter at the Tampa Bay Times, started emailing every police station in Florida. He was asking for any documents created - from 2009 to 2014 - when an officer discharged his weapon in the line of duty. He ended up with a six foot tall stack of reports, pictures, and press clippings cataloging the death or injury of 828 people by Florida police. In part 2 of Shots Fired, Jad and Robert talk to Ben about how communication breakdowns too often lead to violence and our reporter Matt Kielty sits with one man who found himself at the center of a police visit gone horribly wrong. Produced and reported by Matt Kielty. For the full presentation of Ben Montgomery's reporting please visit the Tampa Bay Times' 'Why Do Cops Shoot?" We can't recommend it highly enough. Support Radiolab by becoming a member today at Radiolab.org/donate.

Duration: 29m
Broadcast on: 24 Mar 2017
Audio Format: other

A couple years ago, Ben Montgomery, reporter at the Tampa Bay Times, started emailing every police station in Florida.

He was asking for any documents created - from 2009 to 2014 - when an officer discharged his weapon in the line of duty. He ended up with a six foot tall stack of reports, pictures, and press clippings cataloging the death or injury of 828 people by Florida police.

In part 2 of Shots Fired, Jad and Robert talk to Ben about how communication breakdowns too often lead to violence and our reporter Matt Kielty sits with one man who found himself at the center of a police visit gone horribly wrong.

Produced and reported by Matt Kielty.

For the full presentation of Ben Montgomery's reporting please visit the Tampa Bay Times' 'Why Do Cops Shoot?" We can't recommend it highly enough.

Support Radiolab by becoming a member today at Radiolab.org/donate.

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Before we get going, just a quick warning, this podcast contains some descriptions of graphic violence and also some strong language. Be warned. Oh, wait. You're listening to Radio Lab. Radio Lab. From WNYC. Look, it's hard to kill another human being anymore, right? Our fangs have retreated, our hands are weak, but as we've lost this ability to kill each other, we've gained an ability to read each other's tone of voice and facial expression. And often what's missing in these interactions is one side of that equation. Whether it's the police not seeing somebody because they're running through an alley with their gun drawn and it's dark or shining a flashlight in someone's face, where that person can't see the officer's expression. There's some mask, there's some breakdown in that equation that makes handicaps us from a normal human interaction. Hey, I'm Jada Boomerad. I'm Robert Grohlich. This is Radio Lab. And today we are once again taking a deep dive into Tampa Bay Times reporter Ben Montgomery's mountain of data about police shootings in Florida. So to refresh your memory from, so we've tried to account for every single police shooting from January 1st of 2009 to December 31st of 2014. And we just remind you, Ben and his team at the Tampa Bay Times collected data from 828 police shootings. And there's all kinds of stories that you can tell about this data. Last week, we looked at police training and race and racism. And obviously there's so much more that Cannon should be said about all of that. But this week, we're going to go in a very different direction. Maybe Matt, you just want to set this up for us. Yeah, so we want to tell this story because it actually plays out this idea that Ben just mentioned that there's this sort of communication breakdown that happens. And it does it in a very particular way because when one of these cases comes before a court, the court more often than not, we'll only look at the moment that the cop involved in the shooting pulled their trigger. You don't consider any other moment. It's only the objective facts on the ground of the moment the officer applies force. So the thing that we found compelling about this story is that in this case you can actually see in kind of a rare instance, you can step in and see all the little moments that lead up to that moment. And you realize how complicated these interactions get. So this particular story, it's a story about a white couple, Andrea and Rick Sheldon. And we're actually going to start the story with Rick. So on one of my trips to Florida, Ben and I drove to the northeast corner of the state up near Jacksonville to Rick's place. It's sort of like the wilds of Florida. Hey, sir. Hey, how you doing? Mac guilty. Nice to meet you.

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