WFBMM has written an excellent but disturbing diary on the case of Bryce Masters, a Missouri teen who nearly died (technically, he did die and was resuscitated) after being Tasered by a cop.
In that diary, WFBMM raised an interesting question.
A POST SCRIPT: I hate to have to say this, but I feel I must. I have yet to see any attempts at character assassination on this young man. I mean, isn't that what the talking heads usually do when a teen is either injured or killed by a cop---or a vigilante?
Where are the thug pictures? Where are the hoodie pictures? Where are the stories of behavior issues and problems with authority? Where are the alcohol/marijuana reports from "friends" and acquaintances? Teens are teens. Black, white, brown…whatever. No racial group has a monopoly on these things, so why hasn't the media dug into this kid's life as meticulously as they did all the other victims?
Inquiring minds REALLY wanna know….
I didn't see an explanation given in the comments (if there was one and I missed it, I apologize).
While IANAL, I believe there's a straightforward, though multi-part answer. I'll explain below the Fleur de Kos.
I believe there are three parts to the answer.
1. His father is a police officer.
The crime took place in Independence, Missouri; his father works for the Kansas City police department. Character assassination would not seem a particularly wise move here, since it could lead to ill will on the part of the much larger Kansas City police department (Kansas City has four times the population of Independence).
This, though, doesn't seem like a good enough reason.
2. He just doesn't fit the, ahem, "profile of a thug."
This NBC News article presents a picture of Masters with his mother. One glance at it should explain why WFBMM asked about the 'racial monopoly' above.
But even the lack of an obvious reason for racism, I think, is not quite enough to explain it. Rather, I think there's just one more thing involved:
3. He survived.
The biggest difference between Michael Brown and Bryce Masters, in my opinion, is that Masters did not die from his encounter, while Brown did.
This matters because of a legal doctrine that, as Jonathan Hurley notes can be summed up in one sentence [emphasis mine]:
The English jurist Sir James Stephen put it more simply in 1887, “The dead have no rights and can suffer no wrongs.”
In other words, the Ferguson PD was at liberty to assassinate Brown's character as much as they wanted, without any possibility of repercussions. The Independence PD, at least, doesn't have that option: Masters is alive, and certainly has not acquired the public status required to invoke the higher bar of
actual malice. (If he has achieved any sort of public status, it is only because of their actions.)
Therefore, if they attempt to assassinate Masters' character, he could file suit against anyone making such accusations. [The New York Post, for example, is being sued by the two individuals they proclaimed "Bag Men" after the Boston Marathon bombing.]
While any one of these would be sufficient in my mind to explain it (especially #2 and #3), the three of them combine to make a fairly compelling argument for why we haven't seen people go after Masters the way they did against Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, and so many others.