A month later, Salt Lake journalist still fighting for shooting details

Erin Alberty would like to tell her readers more about what happened on the night police shot Abdullahi Omar Mohamed.

The veteran public safety reporter from The Salt Lake Tribune has been covering police use-of-force situations for years, after all. Last year she was the recipient of the William H. Cowles Memorial Award for public service reporting for her comprehensive reporting on officer-involve shootings.

But nearly four weeks after Mohamed was shot, Alberty's understanding of what happened on the night of Feb. 27 is still largely limited to what her colleagues reported on that night.

Police have been more closed-mouth about this incident, Alberty said, than any other she has covered in her nine years at the Tribune.

“I can’t remember covering a shooting event where we can’t find out how long officers have been working for a department,” Alberty said. “The total lack of information regarding the victim is concerning. It’s about as opaque a process as I’ve encountered in Utah.”

In a press release immediately following the shooting, the Salt Lake City Police Department explained why some issues, such as the officers’ body camera footage from the shooting, have not yet been released to the public.

The department said government agencies do not have to release information to the public if that information is under investigation and would endanger the right to a fair trial.

Fellow reporter Michael McFall was on duty at The Tribune, just blocks away from the site of the shooting, on the night Mohamed was killed, and was quickly on the scene. By the time he arrived, an agitated crowd had gathered around Salt Lake police. Witnesses told McFall that police had shot a teenage boy.

As McFall began searching for witnesses to corroborate the story, some individuals in the crowd threw rocks and yelled obscenities at the police. In response, the police and backup units formed a line across the street and walked in unison with shields to move the crowd back.

“It was tense,” McFall said. “I kept it professional. I tried to stay alert. Keep my eyes open. Stay safe.”

Eventually, he came across Selam Mohammad, a friend of the victim and an eyewitness to the event. Mohammad told McFall that his friend was involved in a fight on the street with another individual when police became involved. Mohammad claimed that police told his friend once to put down the broom handle he was holding, and then started shooting him as soon as he began turning.

McFall said he was cautious about what he reported on that night.

“I prefer to be right rather than be first,” he said.

McFall’s approach to the story was necessary and important, according to Candi Carter Olson, an assistant professor of media and society at Utah State University.

“The dangers of getting it wrong haven't changed over the years, but the increased speed with which information can be disseminated has also increased the speed with which harms can happen,” Olson said. “Incorrect information also lingers longer and can multiply across many more news outlets today.”

Although McFall was aware that the event might trigger continuing national conversations about excessive police force and racial tensions, he did not focus on those issues while covering the shooting. Covering those problems should be reserved for follow-up articles, he said.

Indeed, McFall said, he was confident his colleagues would get more in the days and weeks to come.

But when Alberty tried to attack those "big-picture problems,” she felt thwarted at every turn.

Salt Lake police officials have told her they cannot release information about the event because another department, the Unified Police Department, is now investigating.

Details from the investigation may not be released to the public for several months, according to Ken Hansen, a detective with Unified. Although Unified may finish the investigation within a month, the information will be turned over to the Salt Lake City District Attorney’s Office. The district attorney will review the investigation, decide on charges to pursue, and then release the information to the public.

Until more information is released about the event, Alberty said she cannot begin to tackle the possible racial and police implications in the story.

“The images of the event — there’s an officer with an assault rifle and riot shields — the images were evocative of those that got emblazoned on our brains in Ferguson," she said.

But, she said, she hasn't been able to address the issue responsibly.

“It’s hard to speak about this shooting without knowing what happened," she said. "The rest of the conversation is hard to hinge on that.”