Manteca's daily newspaper and ethics (or lack of)

I picked up a copy of Friday's Manteca Bulletin that happened to be sitting on my dining room table and saw the headline "Manteca burglars barely out of puberty" and under the headline a picture of an unnamed scantily-clad 15-year-old girl with a policeman (her supposed 16-year-old male accomplice is blurry in the background). I opened the paper and on page 3 is a second picture of the same 15-year-old girl from a different angle, being handcuffed by a policeman with her hands behind her back.

I gotta ask: What the hell is wrong with the Manteca Bulletin?

First of all, isn't there some kind of thing in our constitution about being presumed innocent until proven guilty? Why is the Bulletin publishing pictures of a young teenaged girl wearing a skimpy camisole type top with lots of cleavage? not just once on the front page, but again on the inside page with the caption "Officer ... adjusts handcuffs..." sort of giving it a perverse bondage aspect which I don't think was altogether coincidental. It made me ill.

I'm a grandmother and have granddaughters, two of them are 15 years old. If that was my granddaughter's photo in the Bulletin, I don't care what she did, I'd be spitting nails. Not only are the photographs vaguely perverted but in the second photo, you can clearly see her face and I'm sure everyone who knows her, like her neighbors, schoolmates and teachers, recognizes her. So much for protecting minors and people who haven't been convicted of a crime. Another disturbing aspect of the photos is that I'm pretty sure the girl wasn't asked if she minded having her picture taken, she didn't have much choice being in handcuffs and all.

I guess the Bulletin's editor, Dennis Wyatt, liked the pictures so much that he had photographer Glenn Kahl write a second article about it just so he'd have an excuse to use the photo of her in handcuffs because otherwise two photos would probably seem a little much. By the way, isn't it funny how the Bulletin's main photographer always just happens to show up when someone is being arrested? Like he's got some kind of police radio or something that the rest of us ordinary citizens (and The Sun Post) aren't allowed to have since the Manteca Police Department changed to scrambled/encrypted radio transmissions earlier this year. Another layer of secrecy in goverment...but I digress.

Back in 2006, the Manteca Bulletin reported on a Manteca police officer who was arrested for "domestic violence." The policeman was placed on administrative leave pending an investigation. In the article, the Bulletin declined to name the officer citing their policy of not naming anyone, police or regular citizens, who haven't been convicted of a crime. The article also said the alleged violence "didn't result in a serious injury" or require a trip to the hospital (kind of downplaying the violence aspect) so they felt they shouldn't print any names, and pointed out "As always, the individuals arrested are innocent until proven otherwise."

Nice policy. However, the Bulletin routinely prints photos of people being arrested including their names and the alleged crimes. How Dennis Wyatt could say with a straight face that they don't is just astounding. And, here he is putting a picture of a 15-year-old girl in handcuffs on the front page. It's not even clear that she was accused of anything except being in the vicinity when a crime occurred, but hey, they didn't give her name so it's cool.

And while I'm on a rant, what about the way the Manteca Police have a habit of hand-cuffing people they're going to arrest then letting them stand or sit outside so everyone gets a good look instead of putting them directly in the squad car? I know from first hand observation, that sometimes arrestees are hand-cuffed and made to sit on the ground for half an hour or more in full view of everyone on the street. Even international accords on handling prisoners of war prohibits the parading and photographing of prisoners, citing humiliation among other reasons.

The neighborhood I live in has deteriorated over the years and I've had police outside in my front yard with guns drawn (at 8:30 in the morning when I was leaving to take my grandchildren to school!) and suspects handcuffed and sitting on my lawn for 30 minutes. It was quite unnerving to say the least. I think their excuse was that they were waiting for room at the county jail. But waving guns around and putting handcuffed prisoners on my lawn and frightening my grandchildren?! In this particular instance, I think the arrests were for parole violations at a neighbor's house and not for any crime currently in progress. You'd think the police department would have a contingency plan for handling arrests when the jail is full instead of using my yard for a holding cell. But enough about the police for now.

I'm not a fan of the Manteca Bulletin and in the past I've questioned their journalistic ethics and integrity. Time to question it again. Dennis Wyatt...what the hell were you thinking?