Putting aside, for the moment, the incident in Ferguson, Mo., there is evidence that police work has changed dramatically and not always for the better.
I was a police reporter for eight years and I knew every cop in Duval County. In those days, we went to crime scenes and got information firsthand instead of reading it off a police report. In my view, 99 percent of the police officers 50 years ago were honest, brave and hard-working.
Most were not well-educated. I did a feature story on the only officer on the city police force who had a college degree. Now, most of them do, at least in departments that pay for their education.
But, educated or not, the number of incidents involving police violence is unsettling.
In Miami, cops smashed their way into the wrong house while making a raid and allegedly roughed up the occupants. Cops in SWAT gear burst into a barber shop in Orange County, guns drawn, in order to determine whether he had an occupational license.
In Orlando, three cops tasered a guy in a bar, then shot at him. One stray bullet killed a woman nearby who had nothing to do with the incident. A South Carolina trooper gunned down a guy reaching for his license, as the cop commanded.
Media malpractice, which also is on the increase, may exaggerate or misstate some of these incidents, but there are too many of them.
Another worrisome trend is the militarization of the police. They are turning into a large, well-equipped army. Part of the reason is that the federal government is handing out heavy weapons, and the cops are happy to take them. Taxpayers will have to take on the considerable expense of maintaining tanks and personnel carriers.
On the other hand, cops may need more equipment to quell riots, with the media doing everything it can to incite them.
I've covered racial protests that turned violent. In the 1960s Jacksonville had sit-ins and protests and one involved attacks on some of the protesters. We were told to report everything by telephone to the city desk so that a story could be put together without unduly inflaming the public and inciting more violence.
Recently, the Huffington Post ran the Christ-has-risen headline "Arrest Him" in an effort to get the Ferguson police officer arrested and inflame protesters. Even worse, one outlet felt the need to show video of the police officer's home, pinpointing it for violence.
The coverage overall was execrable, highlighting the violence and making editorial observations before the facts were in, siding with those accusing the police officer of wrongdoing.
This was not a new method of reporting. We saw it previously in the Duke lacrosse team case, Tawana Brawley, and Trayvon Martin.
This kind of rush to judgment is antithetical to the idea of objectively reporting the facts in a fair and balanced way. It does not help inform the public but it does follow a political agenda. And the public knows it.
Lloyd Brown was in the newspaper business nearly 50 years, beginning as a copy boy and retiring as editorial page editor of the Florida Times-Union in Jacksonville. After retirement he served as a policy analyst for Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.
