June 1, 2006

Candidates clash with police accountability advocates

DA and mayoral candidates speak at heated police accountability forum

By Daniel DeBolt
Staff writer

Attendees of last week’s mayoral and DA forum on community safety and police accountability witnessed a rare level of confrontation between community members and officials. Before the night was over, few left the east side community center on Alum Rock Avenue without saying something provoking—including the candidates.

A community member named Curly gives an introduction speech before Mayoral and District Attorney candidates at a police accountability and public safety forum May 24 at the East Side Community Center.

Mayoral candidates Dave Cortese, Cindy Chavez, Chuck Reed, David Pandori, and Michael Mulcahy were in attendance, as well as district attorney candidates Dolores Carr and Karyn Sinunu. All felt the wrath of an emotional and sometimes explosive audience, an audience repeatedly asked to be respectful and hear the candidates out.

“You usually don’t see this many brown faces in a room talking about candidates,” said Raj Jayadev, the facilitator and organizer for the event with Silicon Valley DeBug. A host of other groups representing various ethnic communities and media outlets sponsored the event. “This is something we want the candidates to bear witness to.”

Jayadev said it was the right time for the forum, right on the heels of Samuel Martinez’ death by a Taser gun-equipped police officer. Martinez was unarmed.

Call for all-civilian police review board
The night opened with a video that included shots of police violence on Story and King roads during Cinco de Mayo. A speech from a longtime activist who goes by the name Curly followed.

“We ask you to respect our voice tonight, allow us to have our own voice,” he said. “We want to talk about “what we consider to be a police attack on our communities.” It is “nothing short of police terror, violence and racism. At Cinco de Mayo, police attacked a helpless woman … who was later refused medical attention. … This time we have the tapes to prove it.” Every year the police attack brown people at Cinco de Mayo, “it’s the annual hate crime,” he said.

He asked why the police “have funds for Tasers but none for cameras (on all police cars) to catch, prosecute and arrest gunslingers.”

He called for an all-civilian police review board, something that would be brought up repeatedly throughout the night.

Chavez and Cortese were the only two candidates who responded to the idea.

Chavez said that when the city reviewed police review boards in other cities they were a mixed bag, some prosecuted police too much, some not enough and few promoted the trust of the community. Cortese suggested the community bring their concerns to the city through the police auditor, something he said he would be willing to start working on right away.

Negative experiences with police
A panel of community members spoke before the candidates.

Regina Cardenas, daughter of Rudy Cardenas, spoke first. In 2004, according to several witnesses, her father was shot in the back as he fled an undercover state narcotics agent, Michael Walker, who mistook him for a wanted parolee.

“It was pretty blatantly obvious that what happened was wrong,” claimed Cardenas. “You can’t even imagine what it is like,” to have a family member killed like this.

In Walker’s trial, the Cardenas family was able to hear the facts of the case through an open grand jury. But she wanted to know how the candidates for DA would ensure the families of victims would be treated with respect. And she suggested that every police shooting case should have an open grand jury so there would be no secrets.

Richard Konda, executive director of the Asian Law Alliance, said the community’s trust of the police severely deteriorated after the shooting of Cau Bich Tran. He said that at a minimum the city should create a task force to review different systems for police accountability.

A community member named Carlos spoke about the police violence on Cinco de Mayo. He said there was a cultural event at King and Story roads held without a permit that the police initially said was OK. “But we know that on Cinco de Mayo they have been beating us year after year,” he said.

While cameras rolled the police came down the street in riot gear, he said, and while people struggled to take down a sound system, the police confronted the crowd and the situation turned violent. Carlos said the officer who arrested him took off his badge so he couldn’t see it.

People were arrested and charged with felonies and misdemeanors; charges that Carlos said should be dropped. His statement met with applause.

Blanco Bosquez, a member of Civil Rights for Children, spoke about how her mentally challenged son was treated by police as he walked home from school with his brother. In front of his brother, police asked “are you retarded?” she said. Her son didn’t want to go to school for three days.

“That word shouldn’t be in his vocabulary,” Bosquez said about the officer.

The last panel member to speak was Sue Reardon, mother of Eric Kleemeyer, a boy killed after multiple shots by Santa Clara police after a chase ended in front of his home. The details of the case are still unknown, and Reardon wants to know why.

Reardon told an emotional story about how police would not let her see her son when she came home to a crime scene. Kleemeyer had 18 bullet wounds on his body, she said. The image still haunts her of her boy’s body laying in the street for hours while she could only sit in her home watching.

“They took my last hours with my son away from me,” she said.

Reardon said she and others protested the closing of the case to the public. DA candidate and Chief Assistant DA Karyn Sinunu met with Reardon but Reardon said she felt like Sinunu was of no help.

In a year’s time, Kleemeyers’ family still knows no details of what exactly happened.

“Does wearing a badge give someone the right to be judge, jury, and executioner?” Reardon said.

“I miss my son with every breath, and I cry myself to sleep,” she said.

Raj Jayadev, the facilitator of the event, thanked the panelists for talking, because some of them hadn’t talked about their experiences before in public.

The candidates speak
Mayoral Candidate Michael Mulcahy was the first to speak.

“My heart is still racing,” he said.

He thanked Reardon for her story.

“I’m not in city government,” he said. “What I come here with is an open mind.”

Mulcahy said he had to leave the forum after his brief speech and promptly left the building.

Mayoral candidate and Councilwoman Cindy Chavez spoke next.

People like to think “race is not an issue here, but it is,” she said. She said it was obvious there is a problem, but that she didn’t know what the answer was. “Part of it is we get people in a room together and not be afraid to talk.”

Mayoral candidate and Councilman Dave Cortese tried to convince a jeering audience that he was on their side.

“There are many times I learned the hard way to be afraid of the police,” he said.

He suggested that community members meet with independent police auditor (IPA) because she is strained for resources. The IPA makes recommendation to the city council on police matters.

“I’m already a council member and I’m willing to start working on it now,” he said.

Taking his turn in front of an impatient and angry audience, mayoral candidate David Pandori talked about his last seven years as a prosecutor for the DA’s office where he prosecuted judges and police officers. He praised Sinunu for also taking on the police. As a DA, taking on the police takes courage, he said.

Pandori said he was familiar with the shooting of Rudy Cardenas and said agent Walker “was not professional, I’ll put it that way.”

He said video cameras on police cars were a good idea along with community policing. Officers currently change districts every few months so they don’t get to connect with a neighborhood, he said.

Mayoral candidate and Councilman Chuck Reed said the stories the family members told were heartbreaking and
the incidents have to stop or decrease.

In the Air Force, Reed said he chose to be an equal opportunity officer, where he confronted some people who were outright “racists.” He said what he learned in the Air Force applied to the police.

“Even though 99 percent are professional, not everyone is perfect,” Reed said. “I think the best people to deal with the department are in the department.”

The audience booed loudly. Jayadev tried to calm them. We have to allow “the common decency of hearing each other out,” he said.

The forum was a rare opportunity for the community to express concerns with the police.

Jayadev said, and “unless we do it in a respectful way, (this kind of forum) will never happen again.”

DA candidate Judge Dolores Carr commended Jayadev for his comments. “If we don’t listen with open minds we will not be able to get anything done,” she said.

Carr said that in the 1990s people picketed family court everyday because they felt it was unresponsive to their needs. Eighty-five percent of people had no lawyers and many could not speak English and were not provided interpreters while she divided their assets in a divorce. Carr said she turned things around in family court could do the same for the DA’s office if elected.

“I listened, I heard, I changed things,” she said.

According to organizers there was only room for two of the four DA candidates at the forum. Karyn Sinunu was the other DA candidate to speak. “I believe very strongly that we should have independence from the police,” she said. But she suggested that Carr, on the other hand, may not have that independence for a couple of different reasons.

Sinunu said Carr made a statement in a closed hearing that “it’s the job of the DA to back the police” and Sinunu also pointed out that Carr is married to a police officer. Carr denied that she made the statement.

Sinunu said it is the judge’s decision about whether to have an open hearing. When an open hearing was denied in the Kleemeyer case “we shared you agony over that” Sinunu said.

If elected DA, Sinunu said she would make information open to the public for police shooting cases through a coroner’s inquest. “I’m the only candidate who says this,” Sinunu said, “every single hearing should be open to the public if an officer has shot someone.”

The community responds
The microphone was then given to the audience to make comments and ask the candidates questions.

“Control your cops, we don’t want them in our community,” said a representative of the Barrio Defense Committee.

Another woman said, “I’m not afraid to walk downtown, I’m afraid of the police, I’m afraid to call the ambulance.”

A member of the Eric Kleemeyer foundation named Angela asked Pandori why he deserved kudos for having the courage to prosecute the police. As a taxpayer “I expect you to have a backbone,” she said.

Brian Hemle spoke as one of the “Eastside Six,” people who were arrested on Cinco de Mayo on questionable charges. He said he didn’t have questions for people interested in running the police, but asked if the panel was satisfied with the answers they were given by the candidates.

The consensus seemed to be “no way!”

“I’m not satisfied with the idea that the police could police themselves,” Carlos said

Working toward solutions
In conclusion, Jayadev said “these are the realities that are happening in our communities.” Hopefully the forum could lead to some creative solutions, “not after the trigger has been pulled—but before it.”

Cortese’s office issued a press release after the event expressing interest in working with community leaders and the IPA to address issues of police accountability.

Jayadev was surprised. “They finally want to have a conversation abut holding police accountable,” he said. “We were sort of taken by surprise that they even called. Who knows what will come out of this. But, at least [we may get] some acknowledgement about something that is clearly wrong.”

As far as the forum goes, “I think it will go down in San Jose lore as one of the more exciting forums,” Jayadev said, putting it mildly. “I thought it was good.”