NYPost’s Yaron Steinbuch Demonizes Georgia Cop When Video Shows Innocence
- In video where one can clearly see a Deputy fight for his life, the NY Post contends that prior complaints about Deputy Buck Aldridge are relevant: clearly the agenda is to demonize the cop and glorify the criminal
- Leonard Cure was caught doing 100mph on the highway and, when pulled over, tried to push Aldridge into traffic, then tried to choke and break his neck. Everything is verified on both the dashcam from the Deputy, and also his personal bodycam.
- Even though there’s no good faith dispute, the NY Post is smearing the officer while sugarcoating the guy caught on camera assaulting an officer
OUR RATING: Journalistic Malpractice. Even Salon.com is ashamed.
Indicted Outlet: Yaron Steinbuch | New York Post | Link | Archive | Oct. 20, 2023
For decades the left complained that the media was too nice to the police, too deferential in stories where a dead body resulted from a traffic stop. A whole litany of left-wing memes were willed into existence on this point, all calling into question the degree to which police inappropriately acted during traffic stops.
Through the 2010’s, however, the use of police body cams have become near-universal, especially for front-line officers regularly interacting with the public. By 2003, 72% of highway police had at least a dashboard camera. [3] The cameras have reduced a lot of the risk of self-interested testimony about how hostile incidents transpired.
Here, the video evidence makes clear that when Sheriff’s Deputy Buck Aldridge pulled over Leonard Cure in Georgia, he was merely defending himself. Cure’s family has retained an attorney notorious for pushing false legal claims of a racial nature in order to force municipalities to pay millions of dollars in settlements. [4]
Major Violations:
- Lying Headline
- Creating False Connections
- Misrepresentation
- Financial Conflict of Interest
During a traffic stop in Georgia, Camden County Sheriff’s Deputy Buck Aldridge pulled over former convict Leonard Cure. Clearly visible on the dashcam, Cure started fighting Deputy Aldridge and at one point had choked him and clearly had the physical upper hand. At this point Deputy Aldridge shot Cure in the stomach, and Cure later died.
The media is trying to lionize the deceased, Leonard Cure, while it is also trying to demonize the police in this situation: Deputy Aldridge.
The media is hyping up an employment termination from six years ago for Deputy Aldridge, and are hyping Leonard Cure’s exoneration in 2020 for armed robbery. [5] The ‘exoneration’ of Cure was not a proof that he was innocent, however.
The media keeps focusing on trivial, unprovable, details that help Cure’s case: that he was visiting a ‘sick mother’ and that he was an ‘exonerated man.’ The relevant fact is that Cure was not exonerated of this crime. That confusion makes this a lying headline.
Evidence of prior bad acts are inadmissible in most criminal proceedings because they tend to prejudice the viewer rather than have them look at the evidence at hand and judge it impartially. While this is not a courtroom, the media is clearly including this information and focusing on it in an entirely unbalanced way.
The video speaks for itself. Whether Cure was an angel and Aldridge was a devil, the video makes clear who instigated the fight and also shows the multiple steps that Aldridge took to subdue Cure short of shooting him.
The available video evidence [1] could not be clearer.
Here’s the opening sentence by Yaron Steinbuch at the New York Post:
“The Georgia deputy who fatally shot a black man who had served more than 16 years in prison on a wrongful robbery conviction was previously fired from a police department for excessive use of force during a traffic stop, according to a report.”
The victim’s or officer’s race is irrelevant to this story. There’s no credible allegation that race had anything to do with this incident. The number of years that Cure spent in prison is also irrelevant, as is most of the details of his exoneration. Similarly, Aldridge’s prior termination from a police force for an ‘excessive use of force during a traffic stop’ is missing critical context: that it was six years ago.
A reader could reasonably think this stop was about race, that Cure was an innocent man, and that the Deputy was fired last week for excessive force. This is creating false connections in the readers’ mind.
Without the critical details presented to readers, they will fill in the blanks with the most likely answer based on their own prejudices.
Yet if someone watches the full video, Leonard Cure is trying to either snap the neck of Deputy Aldridge or choke him to death, and he keeps saying “Yea, Bitch” repeatedly as he’s choking Aldridge. You can see it on the full video [1] of the encounter posted at the YouTube channel PoliceActivity [2].
This gives you a good idea of what Leonard Cure’s state of mind was during the encounter. He knew he had the upper hand literally and figuratively, and he was going to be able to kill the Deputy either by choking him to death or pushing him into highway traffic.
In the video you can watch as Deputy Aldridge tries to use a Taser on Cure, and then uses a collapsible baton to try and subdue him. When neither of those tactics work, the Deputy resorts to a gunshot to Cure’s ribcage. Even then, you can see Cure on the ground still angrily contemplating continuing the fight.
Earlier in the video you can even see Aldridge keep backing up trying to de-escalate the situation, only to have Cure pursue him and initiate the fight and keep it going.
Despite Aldridge brandishing his Taser, Cure lunged at him repeatedly:
The next two paragraphs create a false moral equivalence between the two:
Camden County Sheriff’s Deputy Buck Aldridge was identified by News4JAX as the officer who fatally shot Leonard Cure, 53, during a violent struggle after the cop stopped him for speeding Monday.
Distressing footage showed him tasing and shooting Cure, who had been out of prison for three and a half years following his exoneration.
Saying there was a “violent struggle” fails to identify that it was Cure who caused the fight. This is missing context.
Writing “after the cop stopped him for speeding” ignores the rate of speed which was a felony charge in every state. Doing more than 20 mph over the speed limit is usually considered “reckless” and subject to an arrest and felony charge. In the video, Deputy Aldridge even mentions this when Cure says that the stop should just result in a ticket and citation. Again, this is missing context.
When Steinbuch writes that it is “distressing footage” notably he does not link to it, denying his readers the ability to decide for themselves after watching the footage. The way Steinbuch then writes as though Deputy Aldridge simply tased and then shot Cure, without explaining that Cure resisted the arrest with violence and nearly killed Deputy Aldridge. This is a misrepresentation of what happened.
Almost every sentence in this New York Post article is dishonest, deceptive, and deceitful.
This next paragraph is more extreme deceitfulness on the part of Steinbuch:
“I see a police officer being way too aggressive to start with,” a fellow officer who was at the scene said of Aldridge, according to the outlet, which cited an internal probe.
“He had no business picking her up and throwing her on the ground.”
The writing leaves the reader unclear as to who is being referenced. And lazy readers might not notice that Steinbuch is quoting an officer from the prior 2017 complaint about excessive force. By being unclear and vague, Steinbuch is making it seem as though that’s a comment another officer who was at the scene with Leonard Cure was saying about Deputy Aldridge.
It’s also devoid of any context or argument in favor of the officer. Surely the report isn’t that he just suddenly came upon a woman and picked her up and threw her to the ground. There is necessary missing context here that Steinbuch refuses to provide.
The only intent in providing this information is to smear Deputy Aldridge.
Buried near the bottom of the article is the admission from Cure’s mother that he suffered from mental illness.
Cure told the Messenger that her son had suffered psychological harm from his years behind bars.
“I’ll say if you spent that much time in prison, it’s going to be hard. I don’t care who you are,” she told the outlet.
If the story had been honestly written, it would have been that mentally ill man started a fight with police after being pulled over for driving 100mph and the fight ended with his death.
That would have given readers the relevant information about the incident, and would have been an objective frame to the story. It wouldn’t be feeding into the financial conflict of interest for the family seeking money alongside their attorneys. It wouldn’t involve finding any bit of information to smear and malign the Trooper.
The framing of this story is wrong and represents serious and systemic journalistic malpractice.
OUR RATING: Journalistic Malpractice. Even Salon.com is ashamed.
Bibliography:
1 ] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7GrcptVf8Yk
2 ] https://www.youtube.com/@PoliceActivity
3 ] https://bja.ojp.gov/sites/g/files/xyckuh186/files/bwc/pdfs/iacpin-carcamerareport.pdf
4 ] https://www.gpb.org/news/2023/10/20/civil-rights-attorney-ben-crump-responds-police-video-showing-killing-of-exonerated
5 ] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12652301/Georgia-cop-shot-dead-exonerated-man-traffic-stop.html
6 ] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12653893/Mother-exonerated-man-Leonard-Cure-shot-dead-cop-traffic-stop-says-didnt-deserve-die-road-tearfully-says-hate-Georgia-demands-justice.html
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