[HPN] San Deigo Cops Shoot Homeless Man Dead - Forrest Curo comments FWD

[Tom Boland]

FWD Tue, 15 Feb 2000 To: "Tom Boland, HPN listworker" <wgcp@earthlink.net>
PLEASE CC REPLIES TO: Forrest Curo <forest@cts.com>
                      of Street Light [homeless newspaper]

COMMENTS on [San Deigo Union-Tribune article]
"Cops Shoot Homeless Man Dead" -- etc

A couple of things about these articles on the recent shooting and community
reaction--

For one thing, that branch is growing like Pinochio's nose. It has now grown
to 4 feet, and the Union-Trib is no longer taking its information from
witnesses, but from the police reports.

Our own story is still unfinished, but it's different from the U.T.'s.

One witness, driving by during the incident, is a law professor. The branch,
he says, was a palm frond.

Another witness, speaking angrily at the police p.r. meeting last night, was
Glen Allison, head of San Diego's Ecumenical Council. He apologized for the
bad manners of some people at the meeting, but stated emphatically that it
had been obvious to any trained observer that the man who was killed was
mentally ill, and that the police mishandled the situation from the
beginning, in that they closed in on him and panicked him rather that
holding back and giving him a chance to calm down.

The UT account of the meeting was badly slanted, seeming to blame
participants for wanting to talk about the shooting rather than sit through
the department's planned presentation. A few activists in the group were
more agressive and hostile than I liked, but there was a large majority of
community members present who were quite simply justifiably angry, first
over this current shooting, and also over the police department's practice
of covering up and exhonerating all shootings by police, the vast majority
of these shootings being black or Chicano people like themselves.

Activists did not call simply for "an elected police review board," as
stated, but for an elected review board with the power to investigate and
subpeona witnesses. The present board, appointed by the City Manager, is a
bad joke to anyone who thinks about their record of uncritical acceptance of
anything a policeman may do.

[My only objection to signing their petition was their "demand" that
officers responsible for the earlier DuBose shooting be tried for murder.
Our way of treating criminals is wrong; it would be just as wrong applied to
police officers.]

Quotes included in the article were not the most cogent things people had to
say; they tended to be the dumbest things said by otherwise intelligent and
reasonable people with serious concerns.

One amusing omission: Mayorial candidate Janice Jordan, like her husband, is
a wrestler, not a "professional" wrestler but a "real" one. Medium height
and slender, she asked a friend, 40 lbs heavier, to attack her so she could
show police how to "take down" an attacker without having to shoot anyone.
The demonstration was impressive.

More will follow when I've transcribed my tape of the meeting.

Forrest Curo
Street Light

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