Gary Younge's column on shooting of Detroit teen by off-duty cop

"Brandon Martell Moore left the world in a shower of bullets followed by deafening silence. Brandon, 16, was looking at video games at National Wholesale Liquidators on 8 Mile Road in Detroit the Sunday after Thanksgiving when an off-duty cop moonlighting as a security guard kicked him and his friends out of the store, claiming they were not accompanied by an adult. The altercation that followed did not involve Brandon but ended in his death.

"It was the middle of the afternoon in plain daylight; Brandon was unarmed; he was shot in the back.

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"He had never been in trouble with the law before. But the man who killed him had. In 1971 Eugene Williams was involved in a fatal hit-and-run accident while under the influence of alcohol. In 1979 Williams shot a 31-year-old man dead during a neighborhood fracas. Five years later he shot his wife in the side during a domestic dispute, but she lived. Williams is also a Detroit cop. His badge number is 4174. At the time of writing he was still on the force. By any standard, you would think this would have been a scandal. But apparently not in Detroit. It took the city's two main newspapers less than 200 words to finish with the story in which they failed even to mention Brandon's name.
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"The Detroit police refuse to talk about it. The office of the mayor--the "hip-hop" mayor, Kwame Kilpatrick, who struts around with "mayor" embroidered on his French cuffs--has not uttered a word and won't return calls. When Brandon's father, John Henry Moore Sr., asked for the police report, the officer told him, "I'm not fucking giving it to you."
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http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070702/younge

I went and searched the News and Free Press archives for articles on this shooting and Younge is absolutely right. It's like the newspaper reporters just wrote down what the police spokesperson said with no investigation at all. Like stenographers.