Chicago - The newsroom at Fox Chicago learned the day after Derrion Albert was killed that there was video of the fight.
Albert was 16 years old and a student at Fenger High School in one of Chicago’s toughest neighborhoods on the far South Side, Roseland. Fox Chicago general assignment reporter Darlene Hill had been assigned to prepare a story on this young man’s life cut short.
No one thought this television report would be any different than the countless other similar stories, usually highlighted by grieving classmates and extended relatives lamenting the senseless tragedy. (“Who would do this to my baby?”)
Buying the Video
But at around 5 p.m. Friday, Sept. 25, Hill sent word that a person whose sister attends the same Chicago public school had approached her wanting the sell the video, and he wanted cash.
At that point, the executive producer of the newscast that evening turned to me. Would it be okay to buy the video? What about his demand for cash?
This amateur photographer had told Hill that he had already contacted one of our television competitors, but he had refused to do business with the station because it had insisted on paying him by check. Whether he wanted cash or check seemed not to make much of a difference to me.
The real issue was if the video was real and what it showed. We decided to ask Hill to watch the video and let us know.
In the meantime, since everyone in the finance area of the station had gone home for the day, executive producer Tony Statz dug into his pocket and came up with most of the $250 asking price, which Hill had negotiated. It has been a long-standing practice in Chicago to pay a similar amount to freelance photographers called “stringers” who listen to police scanners and respond to breaking news 24/7. And now, increasingly, handheld video and cell phone cameras have created a market for the work of “citizen journalists,” people who are simply at the right place at the right time.
Caught on Tape
Hill watched the video with the stringer and was shaken by what she saw.
The street fight, in broad daylight and a short walk down the street and around the corner from Fenger, showed a scene that could only be described as a melee. Sticks of lumber swinging. Screams and swearing. Car horns blaring, as the fight spilled into the street.
About a dozen teens, many of whom were clearly identifiable, were fighting with one another with random recklessness, for no apparent reason. No gang attire; all were dressed in school uniform.
One could speculate that Albert walked into danger, but the conduct of the mob after that point was even more disturbing and inexplicable. Albert fell to the ground, after a boy wearing a red windbreaker grabbed one of those planks of lumber from another student’s hands and swung in Albert’s direction. The broad, flat side hit Albert squarely to the head. Once down on the pavement, bleeding and struggling to get up, a number of the young men continued to hit and kick him, until about four others came to his rescue and dragged his body into a nearby storefront. It was all over in about two minutes.
In effect, the video documented a killing.
The Decision to Air the Video
Hill knew it was too graphic to air in its present form. She asked the photographer if she could take his video camera and memory stick to the station, so that the rest of the news staff could see it and evaluate if it could be used -- and if so, how to include it in her report.
News people are as cynical as they come. Yet for many in this newsroom, the video was too painful to watch. It was raw and graphic. For that reason, there was no question that the action was real. The much tougher discussion was whether we should air it.
The photographer’s motives were suspect. Instead of coming to direct aid of Albert or even calling 911, he shot video at shockingly close range, without apparent regard for Albert’s life or for his own, for that matter. The video, however, backed up his story. He said he had picked up his sister from school, and the first part of the video is, indeed, shot from behind the windshield of a moving car.
He told Hill that he grabbed his camera and starting recording because the fight was, sadly, not that unusual. He wanted to document the violence his sister and others had to endure just to walk to and from school.
After an extended discussion by conference call, the managers at Fox Chicago decided to air and post online an edited and shortened version of the video, taking extreme care to bring the video to “broadcast standards” for both our newscast and our web site.
We also discussed the impact of this video on Albert’s family.
What more compelling example of the conditions near our high schools? It is one thing to describe a neighborhood as “bad” – it is another to watch. How better to communicate the danger near Fenger and other South Side and West Side high schools?
Handing the Tape to the Police
Because the video was so extraordinary
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