Was Mayor Flashing “Gang Sign” or Was KSTP Having a Slow News Day?

November 7, 2014;KSTP-TV

The silly season of electoral politics is not quite over in Minneapolis. Take the case, as reported by KSTP Eye Witness News, of the recently accused gangbanger, Mayor Betty Hodges. During a neighborhood get-out-the-vote effort prior to last week’s midterm election, Hodges posed for a photo with a young man who was working as a canvasser. In the photo, Mayor Hodges is pointing at the young man and he is pointing at her. It turns out the young man is on probation for drug possession and selling, as well as possession of a firearm. If her being in the same photo was not bad enough, the pointing gesture—gasp—was actually a gang sign, according to KSTP.

But the photo was actually taken while a video was being recorded, and if you watch it—at least until the 30 second mark—you will see how completely absurd the issue becomes.

The photo was brought to the attention of KSTP by unspecified law enforcement after it was spotted on the young man’s Facebook page. The intrepid KSTP reporter found a retired Minneapolis police officer, who assessed the photo as “disappointing, because it puts police officers at risk.” The KSTP reporter also interviewed the head of the Minneapolis police union, who similarly chastised the mayor, saying, “When you have the mayor of a major city, with a known criminal, throwing up gang signs, that’s terrible.”

What neither the KSTP reporter nor the news team could seem to uncover, however, was that this may have been nothing more than a move in an ongoing political game between the mayor and the police department. Mayor Hodges has recently been calling for tougher actions against police misconduct.

According to TalkingPoints Memo:

“The television station also neglected to mention that Minneapolis Police Chief Janee Harteau was there with Hodges and at that very moment, off camera. In a tweet that has apparently since been deleted, the Minneapolis Police Department posted a photo on Saturday of Harteau at the scene next to Hodges and the volunteer.”

Here’s a screengrab of the tweet, posted by Daily Kos:

As in all such games, though, the real losers are often the people caught in the middle—like Navell Gordon, the young black man in the photo with the mayor, and the nonprofit that employs him. Mr. Gordon, 22, does have a criminal history to be sure, but he is also trying to turn his life around. For the past two years, he had been employed as a canvasser for Neighborhoods Organizing for Change (NOC). His three-year probation ends in June 2015 and he has not had a single violation. The executive director of NOC, Anthony Newby, acknowledging the potential damage to his organization, described the report as a “slanderous hit piece.”

While it is not clear if Mr. Gordon was convicted of his crimes as a juvenile, Hennepin County has a Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative (JDAI) that seeks to redirect young offenders from detention and other forms of incarceration. When young men like Mr. Gordon try to turn their lives around and they get an assist from nonprofits like NOC, a civil society needs to applaud both, not make the way more difficult for either.

The response to the Eyewitness News report was immediate, strong, and overwhelmingly negative toward KSTP. On social media, it was dubbed “Pointergate” as people took aim at the story. At #pointergate, hundreds of Tweets and photos have been posted that show a wide variety of famous people, including New Jersey governor Chris Christie, former presidents Reagan and Clinton, Oprah Winfrey, Darth Vader and Captain Kirk, and even a painting of God in the Sistine Chapel, pointing in the same manner as Mr. Gordon and Mayor Hodges.

By the way, what does a pointed finger, like the one Mayor Hodges and Mr. Gordon are “flashing,” really mean? According to a retired Minneapolis police officer and the head of the police union—but not the police department, which had no comment—it is a gang sign. According to the leader of the Minneapolis chapter of MADDADS, a national organization that works against inner-city violence, it is not. According to the American Sign Language University, it is called “indexing,” aka “pointing,” to indicate a person is merely present.—Tom Klaus

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About the author

Tom Klaus

Tom Klaus, PhD is a nonprofit consultant specializing in leadership, program, and organizational development as well as research and evaluation. His clients include local, statewide, regional, and national organizations. He has extensive experience with community engagement, intractable controversy management, nonprofit board development and strategy planning, and the management of government funded health and human services grants and projects that are national in scope. In addition to his consulting practice, he has also managed the creation, development and testing of the Roots to Fruit of Sustainable Community Change model (R2F) with a colleague from the University of Iowa. The R2F model integrates the Collective Impact Five Conditions with other salient theoretical frameworks to present a measurable approach to producing long-term community change. Tom Klaus is also an adjunct professor at Eastern University (Philadelphia) in the School of Leadership Development and Ph.D. in Organizational Leadership programs and a frequent keynote speaker and workshop leader. From 2005 to 2013 Tom was Director of Capacity Building & Sustainability at Advocates for Youth in Washington, DC. During that time he served as a project director and as a technical assistance (TA) provider for a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) funded teen pregnancy prevention project. In the role of project director he managed the daily work of the project. As a lead TA provider he created and provided organizational and leadership development training, coaching, materials, and support to local, state, regional and national organizations on a variety of issues, including controversy management, project and organizational sustainability, collaborative partnerships, and organizational change. From 2010 to 2013 Tom led the development of an innovative community mobilization and sustainability framework that is being used by the CDC in its teen pregnancy prevention grantee sites across the United States. Tom Klaus came to Advocates for Youth in December, 2005, from his home state of Iowa, where he had been the executive director and a founding board member of Iowa’s statewide teen pregnancy prevention organization; a developer and master trainer of several teen pregnancy prevention programs that were replicated nationally; a writer of numerous articles and curricula; a youth worker and counselor; and had held local, state, regional, national, and international leadership positions in both religious and public service organizations. Tom has written award winning and award nominated books on adolescent issues for religious publishers. He has also traveled throughout the United States as a speaker in hundreds of schools, colleges, and conferences on topics related to teen pregnancy prevention, adolescent sexual health, male involvement in teen pregnancy prevention, and organizational leadership and change. Tom Klaus is an alumnus of the Greater Des Moines Leadership Institute and a trained facilitator in Appreciative Inquiry, an asset-based change and development model for organizations. He has also received training in the fundamentals of Dynamic Governance, a sociocratic approach to organizational leadership and management. Tom earned degrees in religion and English at William Penn University, a Master of Science degree in counseling from Drake University, and the Doctor of Philosophy in Organizational Leadership (Nonprofit Concentration) at Eastern University. In 2013 Tom began a consulting practice, Tom Klaus & Associates, which is focused on partnering with nonprofit leaders to build greater organizations and programs for good. He is also adjunct faculty in Eastern University's School of Leadership Development and Ph.D. in Organizational Leadership program. Tom's doctoral research examined leadership in an intractable conflict over sexuality education in public schools in the United States. Other recent research and consulting work has included community engagement, reflective leadership, program and organizational sustainability, intractable conflict management, leadership development and coaching, organizational analysis, and board development. Tom is currently working toward accreditation as a leadership and executive coach with MentorCoach LLC and certification by the International Coaching Federation. Tom Klaus is known by his colleagues and clients as an authentic transformational leader; an innovative and focused strategic thinker and planner; a creative problem-solver; a talented trainer, teacher, and motivational speaker; an award-winning writer of numerous books, popular press articles, and professional research publications; and an effective relationship builder with a warm and engaging personality, appreciative management style, and a keen, quirky sense of humor. Tom is also an avid (though not great) ballroom dancer; a frequent (though not often enough) dog walker to his miniature schnauzers; and a practicing (though not perfect) Quaker.