The Dallas police circulated an innocent man's photo to millions after the shootings

[KamaAina]

http://www.vox.com/2016/7/8/12127374/dallas-shootings-mark-hughes-suspect-innocent

About an hour after shots rang out near the end of a protest over police brutality in Dallas, the beginning of a mass shooting that left five police officers dead and nine people injured, the Dallas Police Department tweeted a photo of "one of our suspects," a black man in a camouflage T-shirt carrying an assault rifle.

His image was retweeted thousands of times and broadcast on live national television within moments.

But the police got it wrong. Almost immediately, several videos showed that the man, Mark Hughes, the brother of one of the protest’s organizers, was walking peacefully with a crowd when the shooting began. He turned in his gun to law enforcement officers shortly afterward.

Although Hughes turned himself in and was released later Thursday night, he said police never apologized. And even after another suspect was killed after a standoff with police, the police department so far hasn’t made clear on Twitter that Hughes was wrongly accused.

[snooper2]

1. The local news did a great job covering this last night...

Interviewed his sister, told everyone they just wanted to talk to him...etc.,

They had a lot of restraint and emphasized he is probably just an innocent bystander. Not sure what the dipshit talking heads on the three clusterfuck national networks were saying when his picture came out.

[malaise]

2. So now you know

Open Carry is for whites only

[KamaAina]

3. Has been for a long time

Gov. Reagan turned against it as soon as the Black Panthers started doing it.

[sarisataka]

9. Do you see any incongruity

In the hopes that this incident will advance gun control because the shooter was black? That it will be racism, as it was in passing the Mulford Act, causing the advancement of gun control?

[KamaAina]

12. Actually, my hope is that this incident will advance gun control because the victims were cops.

[sarisataka]

14. So you think

That the shooter was black will not have any effect?

[KamaAina]

15. Well, the Orlando and San Bernardino shooters were people of color, and...

(crickets)

[sarisataka]

16. Point taken nt

[tonyt53]

4. Evidently that is so. Hell, I'm white and know that.

But I'm also not so scared of my own shadow that I need to carry a gun around with me.

[malaise]

6. I hate all guns

Guns were made to kill

[MohRokTah]

5. Open carrying while black.

Apparently, the second amendment is a whites only club.

[TeddyR]

7. Lots of blacks open carry

The issue with this guy (I thought) is that he was carrying a rifle in an area where cops had just been shot with a rifle, so it makes sense that the police wanted to question him. Were there white guys open carrying in the same area who weren't subject to the same?

[LisaL]

22. Lots?

Open carry in TX was just recently passed.

[Schema Thing]

8. fog of chaos... they did the right thing. It was, after all, an emergency situation. Seconds count

[MagickMuffin]

10. Questioning him is one thing,

however, broadcasting his pic all over the place not so much!

They should have waited to broadcast his pic until an arrest was made. Now people are wanting to kill this family, according to his brother who was interviewed by local CBS affiliate.

[Schema Thing]

17. Well they had to find him before they could question him. Going to the public was by far...

...the quickest way to find him.


The media found out much quicker than the chief of police that the man was a protester who'd given his gun to a cop at the onset of violence. But they only found that out because the Chief broadcast his picture in the news conference.


I will say that the media beat that horse waaaaaaaaaay past the time they knew it was a non-issue. Which, essentially, was within about 15 minutes of having broadcast his pic - his brother found reporters on the street and explained the situation to them. The person of interest got in touch with the police shortly thereafter.

[frankieallen]

11. why the hell was he carrying an assault rifle?

good way to get yourself killed.

[Skittles]

13. gun humping POS

[tblue37]

18. Like the cops did to Richard Jewell in Atlanta after the 1996 Olympic Park bombing there.

They essentially ruined his life:

Eighty-eight days after the initial news report, U.S. Attorney Kent Alexander issued a statement saying Jewell “is not a target” of the bombing investigation and that the “unusual and intense publicity” surrounding him was “neither designed nor desired by the FBI, and in fact interfered with the investigation.”

The episode led to soul-searching among news organizations about the use of unattributed or anonymously sourced information. Jewell’s name became shorthand for a person accused of wrongdoing in the media based on scanty information <emphasis added>.

In 1997, U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno expressed regret over the leak regarding Jewell. “I’m very sorry it happened,” she told reporters. “I think we owe him an apology.”

Apparently the media have forgotten whatever lessons they learned from that incident--just as the rabble rousing right wing politicians and media mouths have forgotten the lesson they (very briefly) took from Timothy McVeigh's bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.

[HamiltonSwan]

19. I hope he seeks appropriate legal counsel

What a shit show that was. Disgraceful.

[tblue37]

20. Was and still is, since he is still getting death threats. nt

[LisaL]

21. You go out on the street with a big old rifle.

There is a shooting. Who do thing police are going to suspect?

[Rex]

23. They were in panic mode.

IMO.