Sanford police still hurting from incorrect TV report
For the past four years, the Sanford Police Department has tried to be more transparent with body cams, public-safety announcements and community events, Chief Cecil Smith said this week.
The police have worked at rebuilding community relations since Trayvon Martin’s fatal shooting in 2012 and the 2013 acquittal of George Zimmerman, who shot the teen.
“You know how it was five years ago,” Smith said. “This town was up for grabs on a lot of stuff that was out there, all of the Trayvon Martin stuff, people from around the world who were sending negative comments.”
In recent weeks, the police department received hateful comments from Idaho, Ohio, Wyoming and other places. The reason? An incorrect report by WESH-Channel 2 about the police’s response to a shooting victim. The story received national attention when news organizations picked it up.
“I think the damage has been very profound,” Smith said, adding that the report “taints a
lot of the reputation that we had built up in the community.”
Smith called a news conference April 3 to respond to the WESH report about Latina Herring, 35, who was shot and killed March 27.
In reporting the story on March 31, WESH misinterpreted body cam footage of a Sanford police officer talking to a thirdparty caller on the phone.
What happened next is a cautionary tale for everyone in the digital age, when incorrect reporting can remain online.
The story went viral over that weekend. Sanford police reached out to WESH and had several conversations, Smith said.
WESH on April 3 offered on-air and online corrections.
“We incorrectly reported that one of the officers told Herring to stop calling 911 — just hours before she was killed,” the correction reads. “In fact, that officer was talking to a friend of Herring’s who had been calling 911, fearing she was in danger.”
Herring was among six people, including her two sons, who were shot. Her 8-year-old son, Branden Christian, also died. Allen Cashe, Herring’s boyfriend, was charged with two counts of firstdegree premeditated murder and four counts of attempted murder.
Matt Grant, the WESH reporter who delivered the news story, is no longer at the station. “I sincerely regret my mistake and offered my resignation, which they accepted,” said Grant, who joined the NBC affiliate in 2013.
“He decided to pursue other interests,” said John Soapes, WESH general manager. The station boss said he had no other comment about the report.
Although WESH apologized for the errors, the story was picked up by other media outlets and received wide coverage. An incorrect version by The Associated Press can still be found online.
The Sanford community rallied around police, but Smith said he heard from friends in Seattle, New York and Canada about the report.
“The thing that was most disheartening is that when we said they were incorrect in the reporting, many [news] agencies out there were still running the erroneous information,” Smith said.
People passed along the story that painted the department in a negative light via social media, too, in an era when “fake news” is bemoaned.
“There is a certain responsibility that comes with using social media or any media,” said Al Tompkins, an instructor at the Poynter Institute, a journalism school in St. Petersburg.
“You have a responsibility before you repeat something to do the tiniest amount of critical thinking. Is this right? Is there more I ought to know here? It’s almost like your mother telling you, ‘If you don’t know it to be true, then just don’t say it.’”
The lesson for everyone, he said: “We all have some responsibility for what we send to other people online.”
Tompkins praised WESH’s corrections on air and online.
“That’s a valiant effort. Not everybody does that,” he said. “You have to do everything to try to get the genie back in the bottle. It’s hard. It might be impossible. You’ve got to make a valiant effort to scrub everything you’ve done with prominent notations that it’s not true.”
But Tompkins said real people, such as officers everywhere, were harmed by the mistake.
In discussing the report, Smith recalled the Martin story. Sanford received global attention after the teen was fatally shot Feb. 26, 2012, by Zimmerman, a Neighborhood Watch volunteer who was acquitted of second-degree murder on July 13, 2013.
Since then, the police department has worked for transparency and community outreach.
“A huge amount of information we have done is to make sure our community understands their police department is working for them,” said Smith, who became chief in 2013. He succeeded Bill Lee, who was fired in the wake of national outrage about the way Sanford police handled the Martin investigation.
Though the WESH story went wide, the impact was local.
“It kind of brought a black cloud back over our city again,” Smith said.