Talk:Killing of Robert Godwin/Archive 1

Rage As Cover Story For Terrorist Motive
Isn't there a possibility a a terrorist motive in this case as rage over a previous girlfriend appears to be a deliberatly misleading distraction and lie for the real reason for shooting a random person with no other obvious motive? In the middle east such shootings are very common - as terrorist attacks. Bachcell (talk) 14:04, 17 April 2017 (UTC)
 * This is pure speculation and very unlikely because terrorists want to create terror, so they don't cover up their real motives. --MrBurns (talk) 14:15, 17 April 2017 (UTC)
 * In a Clandestine operation the objective is to make the target of the attack not even know there has been a politically motivated attack and make it look like a random crime. Is there an article yet on how terrorists try to hide their political motives by pretending to be intoxicated, mentally ill or angry at an old girlfriend or ex-wife? The ISIS terrorist who was tackled by US servicmen on the train tried to hide his motives by saying he was just a homeless man who found a gun and was trying to eat by robbing people with an AK-47. He was later tied to ISIS. In the 1997 Empire State Building shooting Ali Hassan Abu Kamal, a 69-year-old Palestinian teacher made no statements about politics, or terrorism, or crime, but 10 years after the shooting, it was revealed to be a deception. Intelligence agencies of the US, Israel, Iran and Russia routinely make assassinations look like traffic accidents, suicides or botched robberies. Bachcell (talk) 18:59, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

In the 2016 Cascade Mall shooting, the suspect whose mother as a muslim and was from the predominantly Muslim nation of Turkey and had an interest in ISIS and posted admiration for leaders of both Iran and ISIS was said to have shouted out the names of women as she shot people. Could this also be an attempt to create a cover story that it was really motivated by rage about women and ex-girlfriends? In this case, authorities made no connection to a possible terrorist motive, though several counter terrorist pundits tried to make this connection to his heritage and political interests. Seems very similar to this case in which the suspect posts video explicitly stating his motive was revenge for breaking up with his former girlfriend. Bachcell (talk) 18:59, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

Edit removed
About 10 minutes ago I added info about Stephens and his $50k reward. It was all remove Sillyman0000 (talk) 23:42, 17 April 2017 (UTC)
 * It was unsourced and primarily not useful to an encyclopedia article about the shooting.  Eve rgr een Fir  (talk) 23:48, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

Photo of Steve Stephens
I can see the utility of including a police photo of Steve Stephens on this page as long as he remains at large; however, if this page continues to exist into the future with the title / heading "The Shooting of Robert Godwin" I would prefer to see a photo of the elderly gentleman who was murdered included rather than his killer. People, such as Stephens, who perform acts of public atrocity such as this relish the publicity they receive, and including his image in a Wikipedia article meets this desire for attention intimately. I'm sure there will be hundreds or thousands of places his image will be available in the aftermath of this event, and wonder whether Wikipedia should be one of those resources. Symmerhill (a.k.a. Summerhill) (talk) 01:15, 18 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Stephens is likely to become, if not already, notable. Godwin never will be. Including a photo of Godwin is straying into the territory of WP:NOTMEMORIAL. WWGB (talk) 01:37, 18 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Any picture would be copyrighted. – Illegitimate Barrister (talk • contribs), 05:49, 18 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Now that Stephens has been found (a suicide), I'm inclined to remove the photo borrowed from his FBI poster from the infobox here. Including a photo of Godwin would violate his privacy (posthumously) and that of his family. I don't think this article requires a photo at all.  General Ization   Talk   18:20, 18 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Living people have privacy, not murderers. Can you please clarify, User:General Ization? Mark Schierbecker (talk) 21:23, 18 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Read the sentence again, please. "Including a photo of Godwin ..." And yes, according to WP:BLP, we are required to respect the privacy of those suspected of murder as well as those who have recently died.  General Ization  Talk   21:24, 18 April 2017 (UTC)
 * User:General Ization, "[a] living person accused of a crime is presumed innocent until convicted by a court of law." -WP:BLP (emphasis mine). Because Stephens is dead the benefit of the doubt is gone. The charges always drop when the perpetrator dies. That's why the article doesn't use any variation of the word "alleged." Baring any reasonable dispute about the Stephens' culpability, Stephens is not given the protections afforded to those accused of a crime. Mark Schierbecker (talk) 21:38, 18 April 2017 (UTC)
 * I did not say anything about presumption of innocence (or privacy, for that matter) with regard to Stephens, and that has nothing to do with whether a picture of him or of Godwin is needed or appropriate here.  General Ization  Talk   21:42, 18 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Not to beleaguer the point, but what specific part of WP:BLP, if at all, applies to these two individuals? Mark Schierbecker (talk) 22:12, 18 April 2017 (UTC)
 * See WP:BDP.  Eve rgr een Fir  (talk) 22:32, 18 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Please stop wikilawyering. I brought up WP:BLP in response to your statement "Living people have privacy, not murderers", which is patently false. BLP provides that living murderers (and living people suspected but not convicted of murder) are still entitled to privacy considerations here, as are the recently dead, especially in a context that "has implications for their living relatives and friends, such as in the case of a ... particularly gruesome crime", as this was and it would have for Mr. Godwin's family. I was not suggesting BLP should apply to Stephens; I simply don't think his photo continues to have any value here.  General Ization  Talk   01:12, 19 April 2017 (UTC)
 * I put the photo of Stephens up for deletion on Commons as it isn't under a free license. I'll re-upload on Wikipedia. Mark Schierbecker (talk) 22:12, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

Link to video
I don't think we need to provide a link to the video of the murder. Unlike police bodycam footage, it does not aid the reader's understanding of the topic. It's just gratuitous.  Eve rgr een Fir  (talk) 20:14, 17 April 2017 (UTC)
 * ✅.  General Ization  Talk   20:19, 17 April 2017 (UTC)


 * The video is the thing that made this topic newsworthy. Without the newsworthiness, the article wouldn't exist. While I can appreciate not wanting to spotlight grisliness, having a standalone grisly article which omits its defining feature just seems like incomplete spotlighting.
 * If Facebook retains copyright on videos it deletes, that's a more valid excuse. InedibleHulk (talk) 19:26, 18 April 2017 (UTC)
 * The posting of the video on Facebook, not the video itself, is what made the story newsworthy. Our readers know very well what was depicted in the video (the unprovoked and random shooting on an Easter afternoon of an unarmed and surprised elderly man minding his own business and walking down a sidewalk) from the article and its sources. We do not need to include a link to the video itself as a "defining feature" of our article.  General Ization   Talk   20:18, 18 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Also, the video contains Stephens demanding that Godwin repeat the name of his (Stephens') girlfriend before Godwin was shot, as if to "blame" her for the shooting before the fact. Many commentators have suggested that the girlfriend is a secondary victim in that her name was widely reported as a result, e.g., . Our linking to the unedited video would only perpetuate this injustice.  General Ization  Talk   21:11, 18 April 2017 (UTC)
 * We currently quote the mother quoting the son saying the girlfriend was to blame, and link to a story naming her. If hearing her name firsthand isn't somehow worse than reading it third-hand, we're already perpetuating the exact same injustice (at least among our literate readers). Your first point is relatively reasonable, though I still think video paints a more accurate picture than video summaries do. InedibleHulk (talk) 00:17, 19 April 2017 (UTC)
 * We do not control or dictate the policies of our secondary and tertiary sources with regard to the names of victims or those only indirectly involved, but we do control the primary content we quote and/or link to and have every right (and are encouraged) to exercise editorial discretion as to how and when we do so. This is an encyclopedia, not a tabloid newspaper. Unless you can articulate some specific encyclopedic value gained by our linking directly to the video not already achieved by our current neutral description of its contents, I see no reason to link to it.  General Ization  Talk   01:26, 19 April 2017 (UTC)
 * The description doesn't even mention Godwin's fearful reactions, let alone his pool of blood. Silently recoiling and falling to the ground is how people are shot to death in children's TV shows. Nobody criticizes Facebook for transmitting Gunsmoke-style violence. People coming to learn about a real shooting and real controversy benefit from audiovisual aids. Even a screenshot is worth (roughly) a thousand words, and reading several thousand words of description would feel dirtier, take longer and still give a fuzzier picture than just watching the clip. That's really as far as I care to argue for this, so if you disagree again, you can consider me defeated. InedibleHulk (talk) 00:58, 22 April 2017 (UTC)
 * We should upload the video itself as fair use, not force readers to click through to get to it. I'm going to first upload a screenshot to see if we can at least get consensus for that. Mark Schierbecker (talk) 21:20, 18 April 2017 (UTC)
 * I disagree, as should be obvious from my comments above (and below, in which I state that I think no photo is needed here) without further exposition.  General Ization  Talk   22:05, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

Acronym usage per MOS:ACRO
I've re-added the expansion of PIT per MOS:ACRO: "Unless specified in the 'Exceptions' section below, an acronym should be written out in full the first time it is used on a page, followed by the abbreviation in parentheses"; this usage does not fall under any of the exceptions. An alternative to using the term PIT and its expansion is to use a generic description of what happened, such as "Pennsylvania State Police immobilized Stephens's vehicle after a brief pursuit." The exact method the PSP used to terminate the pursuit isn't a crucial fact for the context of the article. Another option is to replace the technical term (which is used nowhere else in the article) with either the expansion alone (linked) or a generic term, such as "an immobilization tactic." There are plenty of other ways to write this without violating the MOS with no real good reason or benefit to the article. Holy (talk) 22:14, 18 April 2017 (UTC)


 * Isn't the term "pit maneuver" in common parlance nowadays?  If we used the word "radar" or "sonar" in an article, we would not indicate what the letters stand for.  I believe that "pit maneuver" is similar, in that the acronym has "crept into" modern vocabulary.  I could be wrong, however.    Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 13:47, 19 April 2017 (UTC)
 * I agree that the term PIT maneuver is now in common usage; that's why the title of that article is "PIT maneuver" and not "Precision immobilization technique" (more than 92,000 hits for the former on Google, versus less than 5500 for the latter). Also, the technique has also been widely referred to as Pursuit Intervention Technique (6700+ hits) and other backcronyms with the same initials. Anyone unfamiliar with the term or wanting to learn more about it can simply click through.  As it stands now, the wording is unwieldy and seems overly technical. I disagree that just saying "immobilized" is sufficient; see Wheel clamp, which also immobilizes vehicles but has nothing to do with the maneuver.  General Ization   Talk   15:12, 19 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Radar and sonar have been around so long that they are used and accepted as ordinary words and not acronyms. It has been probably 50 years or more since they were more often written as acronyms than ordinary words. There is no way that PIT is in the same category. I'm no expert in the field, but "pit maneuver," all by itself, does not automatically convey its meaning to me. This is a classic case of needing to expand an acronym if we're going to use it at all. There must be many satisfactory ways to describe how the pursuit ended that don't violate a clear style standard (that is nearly universal, and not just specific to Wikipedia). The exact method used by the PSP to end the pursuit just doesn't seem to be crucial to the overall narrative. Surely vaguer language would be sufficient (with a link to PIT), and there must surely be many word choices that vaguely describe what happened, without going into technical details that are unnecessary for the overall narrative. Holy (talk) 16:41, 19 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Then we should just say "[PSP] successfully executed a tactical maneuver to bring the car to a stop".  General Ization   Talk   19:49, 19 April 2017 (UTC)


 * That seems fine to me. Thanks. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 03:15, 20 April 2017 (UTC)