Letter to the editor: Illustration’s outdated message undercuts impact of state police reporting
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I looked at the front page of the Sunday paper on April 18 to see a Bangor Daily News photo illustration featuring images of three state police officers with their faces blacked out (“Inside the Maine State Police, officer misdeeds are kept secret”). When are we, and the media, going to stop using the color black to indicate something is bad? Given the likelihood that the officers are white, why not “white out” their faces? Or use blue?
While I appreciate the substance of the article and the joint efforts of the Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram and the Bangor Daily News to report on this important topic, I wish more thought was put into the messages that the images convey.
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Our View: Maine State Police should stop hiding officer misconduct records
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Inside the Maine State Police, officer misdeeds are kept secret
The Maine State Police conducted more than 200 internal affairs investigations in the past six years and found allegations to be true in 65 cases, but the misconduct is kept hidden in all but a small number.
By Callie Ferguson, Matt Byrne and Erin Rhoda
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This the first of three stories jointly investigated and written by the Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram and Bangor Daily News about how the Maine State Police conceals officer wrongdoing. The project is supported by the Pulitzer Center.
For the final month of 2019, Maine State Police Sgt. Elisha Fowlie wasn’t allowed to work.
Newspapers join forces in lawsuit, investigation
Competing Maine newspapers team up, and get financial and legal support, to find out what the Maine State Police is concealing about officer misconduct.
By Callie Ferguson, Matt Byrne and Erin Rhoda
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At the end of 2020, both Bangor Daily News reporter Callie Ferguson and Portland Press Herald reporter Matt Byrne checked their email and discovered the Maine State Police had sent them trooper discipline records. Ferguson had requested the documents six months earlier, in late May, and Byrne had waited even longer, having requested them in February 2020.
The two work for competing newspapers, and both had hoped the records could serve as the basis for a story about how Maine’s largest police force handles discipline. But the records were written in such a vague way that it wasn’t possible to understand the underlying misconduct in most cases.