{"id":9154,"date":"2013-03-16T12:55:15","date_gmt":"2013-03-16T19:55:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/amicuscuria.com\/wordpress\/?p=9154"},"modified":"2013-03-16T13:00:41","modified_gmt":"2013-03-16T20:00:41","slug":"blaming-the-victims","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/amicuscuria.com\/wordpress\/blaming-the-victims\/","title":{"rendered":"Blaming The Victims"},"content":{"rendered":"

Police and Media Resort to Victim-Blaming in Shooting Death of Chicago\u00a0Infant<\/h1>\n
\"\"<\/a>

Rania Khalek<\/p><\/div>\n

by Rania Khalek on March 15, 2013<\/strong><\/div>\n

Jonylah Watkins, just 6-months-old, was shot on Monday, March 11, on Chicago\u2019s South Side as her dad changed her\u00a0diaper\u00a0in the front passenger\u2019s seat of their minivan.<\/p>\n

She was rushed to the hospital where she underwent\u00a0several<\/a>\u00a0surgeries, blood transfusions and resuscitations.<\/p>\n

Jonylah\u2019s tiny body was pierced with bullet wounds that tore through her\u00a0lung, liver, leg, shoulder and bowel<\/a>. Doctors and nurses struggled for 17 hours to save her life but her body couldn\u2019t take it. She\u00a0died<\/a>\u00a0Tuesday morning.<\/p>\n

Jonylah\u2019s father, 28-year-old\u00a0Jonathan Watkins, was also shot and rushed to the hospital where he was in serious-to-critical condition. He was released in stable condition on Thursday and headed straight to the police station to\u00a0cooperate<\/a>\u00a0with authorities in finding his daughter\u2019s killer. Yet in the eyes of the police and the media, Jonylah\u2019s murder is her father\u2019s fault.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Jonathan Watkins w\/his baby girl, Jonylah<\/p><\/div>\n

In the immediate aftermath of the Jonylah\u2019s death, the\u00a0media obsessed over her father\u2019s past criminal history and his ties to the the Gangster Disciples, a Chicago street gang, leading to speculation that he was the target of a rival gang. CBS Chicago even referred to him, not by name, but as \u201cthe reputed gang member<\/a>\u201c.<\/p>\n

This speculation came directly from police who, just hours after Jonylah\u2019s death, told reporters that Watkins\u2019s\u00a0extensive criminal record proves he was the intended target<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen these events happen, we have to look at the circumstances and the backgrounds of the individuals that are involved,\u201d said\u00a0Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy at a press conference on Tuesday. \u201cAlthough there\u2019s a lot of angles that we\u2019re pursuing, there are very strong gang overtones to this particular event.\u201d\u00a0He insisted that the shooting wasn\u2019t random and that \u201cwhoever was doing this was firing at the father and exclusively at the father.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the family\u2019s spokesperson,\u00a0Pastor Corey Brooks, has repeatedly informed the media that Watkins is not a gang member and his criminal past is far behind him.<\/p>\n

\u201cBrooks said that Watkins is not affiliated with any of Chicago\u2019s four major street gangs, and has not had any trouble with the law since 2007,\u201d\u00a0reports<\/a>\u00a0ABC Radio News. Nevertheless, \u201cChicago police said they are not retracting any of McCarthy\u2019s statements on Watkins or the shooting.\u201d<\/p>\n

That hasn\u2019t stopped mainstream news outlets like \u00a0NBC Chicago<\/a>\u00a0from laying out Watkins\u2019s criminal history as told by the police:<\/p>\n

\n

Records show Jonathan Watkins has been arrested 39 times and has ties to the Gangster Disciples. Numerous weapons violations and an attempt to steal his car back from police after it was impounded are among the charges.<\/p>\n

Watkins, 28, also doesn\u2019t hold a valid Illinois driver\u2019s license and shouldn\u2019t have been driving when he pulled over to change his daughter\u2019s diaper at about 12:45 Monday afternoon.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The\u00a0unconfirmed claim about his alleged gang association\u00a0was accompanied by a mugshot, just in case readers had any doubt that this black father is a bad man.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/div>\n

NBC Chicago added that \u201cAuthorities said Watkins has so far been uncooperative in providing information as to who shot him.\u201d<\/p>\n

Instead of contacting Watkin\u2019s\u2014who was in the hospital in critical condition at the time of the report\u2014to confirm this, NBC painted him as a \u201cgang-banger\u201d unwilling to help police\u00a0find the person who murdered his daughter.<\/p>\n

According to court records, Watkins was\u00a0arrested in 2007<\/a>\u00a0for illegal possession of a handgun he told police he needed for protection, which landed him in prison for three years. All other media accusations against Watkins appear to be based solely on unconfirmed police claims.<\/p>\n

Watkins was further vilified in the Chicago Sun-Times, which\u00a0cited<\/a>\u00a0an unnamed \u201ctop police source\u201d who says, \u201cWatkins is giving the police just enough to seem to be cooperating,\u201d but in reality he\u2019s \u201cunwilling to cooperate\u201d because he refused to give police his cell phone.<\/p>\n

Again, there doesn\u2019t appear to have been an attempt to contact the family for comment, which is journalistic malpractice at best, especially since the person making these allegations is doing so behind a veil of unjustified \u00a0anonymity.<\/p>\n

In the aftermath of this horrific tragedy, perhaps it\u2019s easier to blame Jonathan Watkins for his baby girl\u2019s murder because such a conclusion allows people to dismiss Jonylah\u2019s death as a tragedy that only happens to the children of criminal parents. In other words, there\u2019s no need for non-gang member white parents to worry because this would never happen to them or their children.<\/p>\n

But in reality, Jonathan Watkins and his wife, Judy, are victims of gun violence\u2014just like the parents of 7-year-old Heaven Sutton, 15-year-old\u00a0Hadiya\u00a0Pendleton and the 20 children massacred at Sandy Hook Elementary school in December\u2014regardless of his past. Otherizing Jonylah\u2019s parents, as we often do to parents of color, isn\u2019t going to change that.<\/p>\n

On a side note, Lupe Fiasco\u00a0released a new song<\/a>, titled \u201cJonylah Forever\u201d, dedicated to the memory of Jonylah Watkins and what her life could have been.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Police and Media Resort to Victim-Blaming in Shooting Death of Chicago\u00a0Infant by Rania Khalek on March 15, 2013 Jonylah Watkins, just 6-months-old, was shot on Monday, March 11, on Chicago\u2019s South Side as her dad changed her\u00a0diaper\u00a0in the front passenger\u2019s … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/amicuscuria.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/amicuscuria.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/amicuscuria.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/amicuscuria.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/amicuscuria.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9154"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/amicuscuria.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9154\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9161,"href":"http:\/\/amicuscuria.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9154\/revisions\/9161"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/amicuscuria.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/amicuscuria.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/amicuscuria.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}