Reflection 2 on Shaq and Officer White

   A little over a month ago there was an awesome video going around of a police officer showing up to go see about a call that had been made reporting children being loud and disruptive in the neighborhood. Those kids were playing basketball. Upon arriving that police officer started asking the kids some question and then began playing basketball with them. He ended up playing with them for a long time and it seemed to be a pretty fun experience for everyone involved.

   The whole video was recording on the officer's dashboard camera and it ended up being posted on social media a short time later and became the subject of conversation for many online newspapers and media outlets. Such as CBS who highlighted the great fact that these were outside playing and enjoying themselves instead of inside playing video games all day. The general public deems long amounts of video games instead to be a terrible thing (which is a conversation for another time) and so CBS made to highlight that aspect of the case. By highlighting that it showed they were very much on the police officer's side.

   But with all these media outlets on the side of this cop, who is pretty clearly awesome, what about that person who had originally called the cop into the situation? What was their opinion of that cop after the incident? Police officers have been taking a lot of heat lately in the media and it makes you wonder how that individual, who had called Officer White, felt once they saw how he took care of the situation. We don't know what they were dealing with at that time or the reason for calling in all of the noise. What if they were taking care of a baby or someone struggling with a bad illness? Or what if they work night shifts to take care of their family and they hadn't been able to sleep because of it? Did the boys have another options of where they could have played and had it been a reoccurring up to this point?

   Of course I don't know the answer to these questions but it reminds us of how incidents like these can escalate quickly and throw someone or some people onto "the losing team." They can go from someone who was really trying to get help or to help the neighborhood (in their eyes) to a person that is basically a joke and a laughing stalk who now wouldn't have much traction if they were to try and argue against the officer's side because the media would immediately turn on that person.

    But wait, there's more. On top of everything the media had already done for this situation there became another key factor to the story.

   Everyone's favorite 7 ft TV basketball analyst and TV star in general Mr. Big Cactus himself, Shaquille O'neal decides to join the officer in a rematch. This huge (pun intended) rematch took place after Shaq surprised the officer and arranged for them to be teammates in this street ball game to take place.

   How big did the Shaq (and Officer White) basketball game become? Well according to journalists in Venezuela it was a big enough story that they would right about it down there! Imagine all of the publicity this story is getting around the world and some of the reactions that look to America as a huge source of their news. The people in Venezuela now might assume that all American police officers are cool and fun and that Shaq is totally legit. Both of which might be true but now this could be the only story a little Venezuelan boy sees, hears, or reads about related to Shaq, policer officers and how our law enforcement runs in this country and might be slightly disappointed to find out this isn't how it always work in every situation.

   A great example of this would be an American hearing one or two stories of a police officer in Mexico being corrupt or making a bad decision all of a sudden there is a stereotype placed on these Latin police officers and that American might not really have much ground to stand on. Basically one of the big points I want to make about this story is while the story is awesome, funny and great it is there is a lot of power in the media being able to shape how large groups of people are viewed and perceived just because of a viral video or two that makes its way through outlet after outlet. That being said, Shaq and Officer White are pretty sweet!