This morning I logged on to twitter and saw some discussion about Columbia Professor and TV personality Marc Lamont Hill being harassed by the Philadelphia Police. The story he recounts is interesting to say the least (click on each photo to enlarge it):

I would be remiss if I didn’t admit that I find Hill’s story to be problematic.  Briefly, I’ve never heard of the “illegal discharge of a passenger” charge, and a quick google search of the phrase in quotes turned up results that led only to Hill’s twitter page and to pages related to his stream. Further, the dialogue between Hill and the officer sounded contrived, in particular the part where the officer expresses disbelief at Hill’s Ph.D. Philadelphia is a city with many educated minorities and is home to some of the most prestigious universities in the country: University of Pennsylvania, Temple, Drexel, Saint Josephs, and Villanova. Therefore, it’s not uncommon for the police to run into educated minorities.

Because minorities (successful and not) are still victims of harassment by police and many true stories sound implausible initially, Hill’s claims cannot be dismissed out of turn. I made calls to both the police department and the Mayor’s office and will update when and if I receive a response.

When I last checked Hill’s twitter mentions/replies were full of support for him and many expressed hope that he obtained the officers’ badge numbers. Sherri Shepherd, co-host of ABC’s “The View,” immediately expressed her sympathy for Hill. It will be interesting to see if she mentions the incident on her show.

Hill is frequently tapped to comment on race issues. If he doesn’t take action in this situation, it could be damaging to his reputation. Certainly, someone who was calm enough to release a stream of tweets shortly after an incident would be expected to be calm enough to request an officer’s badge number especially given his knowledge of these situations.

The Philadelphia police are not without their image problems. Recently, in 2008, Philadelphia police were caught on tape beating a suspect and the video became a sensation on YouTube. The city’s police department image issues are not new–people are still discussing the case of Mumia Abu Jamal and the city’s bombing of a Philadelphia house in 1985 in connection with the “Move” organization. In fact, the 25th anniversary of the bombing was recently covered in the media–though not extensively.

I will update this post once the story plays out and I hear back from the Police department and/or Mayor’s office. If this story gets picked up, I think it is a good opportunity to analyze the way a media personality and a city and police department handle a difficult issue.

MediaSTRUT is an analysis site that aims to analyze how public figures handle the media and, conversely, how the media handles them.