One week after the murder of four Lakewood police officers, our community’s emotions still are raw.
We saw evidence of it all week in letters to the editor, comments on our Web site and notes from readers. They are shaken, they are angry and they are protective of the officers’ families and law enforcement brethren.
We have tried to bring the facts of this story to light quickly and completely while being sensitive to the feelings of a tender community. On our news pages, I believe our staff has done that.
But on Friday, it was our comics page that upset a number of readers with a strip depicting the shooting of a police officer while on duty. On another week, the scene would have been strong; last week, it was simply too much. Readers thought so, and we agreed.
As we explained online Friday and in Saturday’s paper, we buy comic strips for their continuing story lines, but don’t select or edit each day’s panel. An outside vendor assembles our comics pages and sends them to us more than a week in advance. We print a week’s worth each Friday.
Friday’s “Jump Start” came to us Nov. 25 and was printed Nov. 27. Our editors watch for offensive words or images in strips known for questionable content, but “Jump Start” has not been one of them. In this case, editors were reviewing comics pages days before the officer shootings in Parkland.
Comic strip vendors sometimes notify us in advance when a panel has questionable content, but that didn’t happen this time. I have asked the “Jump Start” syndicate in the future to err on the side of over-communicating about content we might find questionable.
Truthfully, it was the timing of this strip for our community that was so troubling. “Jump Start” runs in about 400 newspapers across the country, and the syndicate said Friday that they received calls from only three papers, including one in another community that experienced a police shooting last week.
Ironically, “Jump Start” artist Robb Armstrong, who drew the image that readers saw as insensitive, works through his strip to encourage officer safety and show appreciation for the risks officers take. “Jump Start’s” main characters are Joe Cobb, a police officer, and his wife, Marcy, a nurse.
Armstrong created the strip more than 20 years ago and struck out to develop main characters that were positive role models, particularly for the African American community. I talked to Armstrong on Friday.
“I made Joe a cop because I wanted people to see him in the strip and see him immediately as something good and positive,” Armstrong said.
As the strip went on, he heard positive feedback from police officers, he said, and has been invited on ride-alongs to learn more about what they do.
That’s what has led Armstrong to go back time and again in his strip to encourage Joe to be safe, specifically to wear a protective vest. Sometimes Armstrong’s story lines are funny; other times he’s trying to make a serious point.
In 2000, character Joe Cobb was shot in the line of duty, although Armstrong told that story through words rather than pictures. Joe survived because he was wearing a protective vest. As a tribute to Armstrong’s storyline, the International Association of Chiefs of Police inducted Joe as an honorary member into a survivors’ club that honors officers who survive injuries by wearing protective gear.
The “Jump Start” strip is in the midst of a similar story line that has been playing out in our paper for more than a week. It started on Thanksgiving Day when Joe gave dinner to a homeless family. To thank Joe, the father of the family presented him with a “guardian medallion.” He asked Joe to wear it every day to keep him safe. Joe agreed, but later put the medallion in a drawer.
Only after Joe’s wife pestered him to wear the medallion as he promised did Joe reluctantly don the cumbersome, ugly piece of metal. Joe is shot that day while on duty. The medallion takes the bullet and saves Joe’s life.
On the surface, Armstrong said, this story line is about doing good deeds for one another.
“On deeper level, I want to say directly to law enforcement, I want them wearing a vest every single day,” he said. “It’s your badge of honor, your hero medallion.”
Friday’s “Jump Start” strip showed the shooting. Saturday’s strip showed his survival. However, it began at the scene of the shooting with Joe’s partner yelling, “Officer down!”
We decided that imagery still was too strong for our readers, so we threw out the Saturday comics pages we had already printed. We masked the “Jump Start” strip, replaced it with an editor’s explanation and reprinted the pages.
We will pick the strip up again Monday with Joe recovering and talking about on-the-job safety.
While we can work to improve our system for processing comics, it will never be perfect. I’m sorry the image appeared in our paper Friday, and if we’d seen it coming, we’d have pulled it as we did Saturday’s.
Karen Peterson: 253-597-8434
karen.peterson@thenewstribune.com
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