Woman in Wheelchair Shoots Attacker

Yesterday's NYT publishes the above headline to this story. Why?

In addition to the technically inaccurate alliteration in the title (it's a scooter, not a wheelchair), this is another example of crappy NYT disability reporting. Stereotypes galore.

As muggings go, it began like many others. A 56-year-old woman was leaving her building in her wheelchair, her only company the small dog perched on her lap.

Her attacker came from behind, the police said, and there was no one else around.

The phrase "only company" seems designed to perpetuate the image of isolated, disabled people. For all we know at the beginning of this piece the woman in the chair ...why is she not named yet? why do we know nothing about her but her chair? ... has no family and no friends but her small dog. Pity the powerless woman, please. She's alone. Disabled and alone.

Despite what the reporters suggest, she could have just been running out to the store to pick up some odds and ends for the party she's about to have. She could have been running across the street for a neighbour. She could have been doing anything. But the story doesn't allow for any such possibility. For the narrative drama to work, she has to be a lonely, pitiable figure who triumphs over her helplessness. And this desire to portray her as helpless governs the rhetoric of the story.

Rhetoric aside, there are also some facts. As one part of the article near the end reveals, Ms. Johnson is off to the firing range. The politics of gun ownership apart, this story could have begun: On the way to the range, Ms. Johnson was attacked .... she then .... OR Ms. Johnson, something about her personal life and circumstances, .......Well, of course, that is less interesting, but ya know, the story is only interesting because she's a powerless, helpless, pitiable, pitiful, victimized "woman in a wheelchair." So, ta-da, the story comes from the moment in which the helpless cripple, the woman in the wheelchair, triumphs over adversity. And triumph she does.

But this attempted robbery had an ending unlike many others. As it turns out, the would-be victim, Margaret Johnson, has a permit to carry a .357 handgun — and she carries it often.

The mugging ended seconds after it began, the police said, when Ms. Johnson pulled out her gun and shot her attacker in his arm.

After that, things begin to get funky. Ms. Johnson speaks for herself: Ms. Johnson, who was treated at a local hospital and later released, said she suffered bruises to her neck and arm. “I’m tired, I’m really tired,” she said as she sat in her apartment last night, wearing a tan baseball cap and appearing rattled. “He tried to mug me, so I shot him.”

Ms. Johnson, according to a long time friend: Tio Frederick, 26, a lawyer and neighbor who has known Ms. Johnson for 20 years, called her amicable but tough and spunky. “I wouldn’t assume that if she got mugged she would let someone just take her stuff,” she said.

Ms. Johnson according to a friend who spoke to her afterwards: Ms. Bunce, a longtime neighbor, said Ms. Johnson was frightened and threatened never to walk her dog again.

“She was very much the victim,” Ms. Bunce said. “She was scared for her life. She’s devastated.”

OK. I understand that you can be both terrified and spunky, but shouldn't the reporters be doing a better job here? Which of these quotes are they most interested in? Ms. Frederick's quote comes immediately after the meat of the attack. Is this our take home quote? Ms. Bunce's quote ends the article. So, the story begins and ends with a powerless victim: the woman in the wheelchair. Is this what we are to remember?

I find the oddities of the story more interesting. Ms. Bunce says Ms. Johnson is threatening never to walk her dog again; I take this to mean that Ms. Johnson was walking her dog when the incident happened. But the reporters stress that Ms. Johnson was off to the range (the circumstances in which her gun licence allows her to transport her gun). Then, there is a series of interesting, but insufficiently integrated comments which tell us that Ms. Johnson is not currently facing charges and that there has been a recent crime wave in her building.

To my mind, stronger and more interesting reporting would have ditched the helpless cripple angle and gone with the meatier questions.

• Does the difference between the friend suggesting she was walking the dog and Ms. Johnson's stated destination mean that she was perhaps contravening the conditions of her license? Could she be sued for this? What does that say about gun laws? Can you just "shoot someone" without legal consequences if you are being attacked? And if you can, should you?
  
• Where are the considerations of the politics of policing? What about the politics of recidivism and rehabilitation? What kinds of approaches to crime and community/therapeutic/restorative justice might be appropriate here?
• What about the problems of gun ownership in American culture and in communities under pressure?
  
• What do we say about a world where such an attack can happen (in general) and at 3 pm (in particular)?
• What about the intersections of race, disability, crime, and weaponry? (Beyond the overly simplistic stereotype of young African American men with SCIs arising from gang violence).
  

These are just entree points -- possible perspectives. Unless Harriet McBryde Johnson (no relative) is being featured, the NYT has a lousy record for disability reporting. And I am amazed to see that three reporters contributed to this piece. It took three people to get this sappy, stereotyping, uncritical, and short piece together?

My heart goes out to Ms Johnson. The behaviour of her assailant is inexcusable. This telling of her story, however, is unacceptable.