The Gousha & Hagerty Show

An update to the last post, which I should have made Sunday night. That night Mike Gousha had a lengthy interview with Milwaukee Police Chief Nan Hagerty. More discussion about the credibility of the police department and their integrity. Gousha went the entire interview without mentioning any of the episodes of police misinformation carried unquestioningly by his news reports. It should be noted that a public meeting at city hall had just been held and that members of the public had independently raised the same issues as my last post. They noted that the entire community, and the African American community in particular, had been libeled in the police misinformation about the two missing boys. If Gousha were the journalist he pretends to be and not just a pretty face, he might have asked:

Who came up with the idea of announcing publicly that the police had solid information that someone knew the whereabouts of the boys?

What people in the police department knew that was a lie?

Is there any procedure for review the appropriateness of incorporating particular misinformation into the department's public statements?

Was that process folowed here?

Who if anyone signed off on the lies?

Were the appropriate deciders aware of the lie, or were they misled by lower-level officers?

If the lies were signed off on, what is the official justification of the Department for lying?

Did the department consider the fact that lying could injure public trust in the department in the future?

Did it consider that its statements denigrated a particular community with already strained relations with the police?

If the lies were against policy, has anyone been disciplined?

If so, who, and what is the nature of the discipline?

Has the department reevaluated its approach in light of the intensity of trust issues after the Jude verdict?

The official line from the MPD is that it's just a handful of lower level officers who are untrustworthy and the top of the department is credible. How can this be reconciled with what appears to be an institutional pattern of official lying by the department?

But, of course, this was a suck-up no-heat interview with Channel 4 continuing in its predictable role as a shill for the department. Surprise, surprise!