HOUSTON – The following article is part of a series titled ‘The Perfect Victim,’ dissecting why police and the media may treat certain crime victims upright while surfacing negative qualities about others that often have nothing to do with their current circumstances.
When you think of what a victim is, what comes to your mind? Do you put a face with that label, and if so, what does that face look like to you?
According to the Oxford Dictionary, a victim is defined as ‘a person harmed, injured, or killed as a result of a crime, accident, or other event or action.’
Which leads us to the question... When someone is the victim of a crime, should their past circumstances or present choices determine how we react to their death? Do we have less empathy for those whose lifestyles don’t look like ours?
KPRC 2 has been working to reveal answers to these questions that some may say stem from implicit bias or negative attitudes towards a group of people that you may not even be consciously aware you have.
Oftentimes, members of the media, journalists, and police have been told that they trump the gruesome way a person has died or was killed by overshadowing the current story with unneeded history on the victim’s life and/or criminal history.
Right now, in the Houston area, a young woman by the name of Deundrea Ford has been missing since Sept. 21.
Ford, who was 21 at the time of her disappearance, was last seen leaving her job where she worked at a bar in east Houston. As the community rallied together to investigate her death, certain media outlets were able to dig into her past and publicize the fact that she was previously a witness in a capital murder trial.
Debates across the Houston area ensued as community members began to question the relevance of her role in that trial to her disappearance. Many stated that the main goal should be getting her back home to her family and not suggesting that she went missing for any particular reason.
Additionally, many people, including those in the KPRC 2 newsroom, began asking a bigger question on the topic of what it means to be “The Perfect Victim.”
Do we let heinous situations like this fall to the waste side while subconsciously thinking, “Well, this is her lifestyle so she should have known what comes with it?”
Similar questions were asked in two huge cases that happened in our country about three years ago.
First, the case of Houston native George Floyd.
Floyd, who was 46 years old at the time of his murder, was known around his hometown as being a father, brother, son, uncle, and friend to those in his neighborhood.
The ‘Third Ward Angel‘ was often referred to as a gentle giant by his loved ones because of his height and body structure.
Although his gruesome death at the hands of officers with the Minneapolis police department was captured in real-time on cell phone video, members of the public and media began to dig into his criminal record and attempted to attribute his murder to his previous criminal charges.
When he died, it was revealed he had previously been arrested and had a criminal history that dated back to 1997.
The question is… did those charges play a role in his murder?
The simple answer is… no.
Floyd was still unlawfully killed, stripped away from his family, for a situation that had nothing to do with his background.
So, why were his previous crimes relevant?
It wasn’t.
Particular media outlets tried to paint the picture that Floyd deserved what he got, and that there was one less criminal off the streets thanks to police.
When in reality, he never deserved to die at that place, at that time, and in that manner.
Another case brought for examination is the case of Breonna Taylor.
Taylor was brutally shot and killed while she and her boyfriend were inside their apartment in Louisville, Kentucky on March 13, 2020.
According to police, officers were issuing a “no-knock” search warrant at the residence after receiving erroneous information that someone was using her address to sell drugs.
Taylor, who was 26 when she was killed, was simply inside watching a movie when the chaos ensued.
Reports suggest that when authorities arrived at the residence, both Taylor and her boyfriend asked who was at the door multiple times. Police then broke the door off the hinges and Taylor’s boyfriend shot at the police one time, thinking it was an intruder, as he attempted to defend his home.
Officers then returned fire, including 10 blind rounds, and ended up shooting Taylor five times.
Her boyfriend was later arrested from the scene and subsequently charged with assault and attempted murder of a police officer.
The question here… Did an assumption of drugs inside of the home warrant a “no-knock” warrant or the deadly shooting of Ms. Taylor? And later the arrest of her boyfriend?
The simple answer here… you guessed it… no.
Some would argue that it was an easy thing for law enforcement officers to pin the drugs on this couple in an effort to close in and make an arrest.
One thing I think most people can agree on is that she should not have been murdered during this incident and that her boyfriend’s case should not have been vilified in the matter it was based on the circumstances. Instead, the state placed him in jail and didn’t treat him or Taylor’s family like the victims in this case.
Either way, selling drugs, working at a strip club or bikini bar, having a criminal history, or being raised in an underserved community should not be an immediate death ticket and the justification thereof.
In the KPRC 2 newsroom, we are continuing the conversation about what more we, as journalists, can do to properly tell the stories of missing Black and brown people across our area and the nation. We created a series titled ‘The Perfect Victim,’ as we question the reason why people of color who go missing or are killed are not labeled as a victim and are even times vilified in the public eye.