SJI’s favorite news-blogger, Watch Dog Silicon Valley, broke yet another story on Tesla Motors yesterday (and followed up this morning). It seems that the young electric car company, until recently considered San Jose’s Great Green Hope, has in fact secured $350 million from the federal government, BUT is in “late-stage negotiations” to build a plant in New Mexico.
Dutifully reading the Merc (and every other local news source) so we don’t have to (and providing a smidge of spin), Watch Dog also reports today on Mayor Chuck Reed’s trip to DC, Councilmember Rose Herrera’s flip-flopping on crossing guards, and the troubling taser-death of yet another San Jose man at the hands of SJPD officers.
Starting tomorrow, read Watch Dog’s daily roundup of local news here on San Jose Inside every morning.
Will you be running ads for used cars on here soon?
Great, even more consolidation of local media under the Metro banner. SJI, LG Observer and now Watch Dog. (Did I miss any?)
So much for bloggers as an independent voice!
Just curious…
Here is your link to the Tesla story about New Mexico:
http://www.bizjournals.com/albuquerque/stories/2009/02/02/daily20.html
In the link on Watchdog to Tesla’s announcement in early February, where does it say that they’ll be going back to New Mexico?
Just what story do you think you’ve broken?
#2 finfan: I respect your commitment to defending the police, but you’re reading a lot into three words—this is not a rush to judgment nor an effort to impugn the integrity of San Jose’s public servants.
We can assume since the officer used a taser that he or she did not intend to kill the perpetrator; the officer would likely agree that the death is troubling.
#4: “…in early February the New Mexico Business Weekly reported that the company was in “late stage” negotiations to move the (previously slated for San Jose) manufacturing plant there…”
I’ve been enjoying Watch Dog, it’s the antithesis of eliminating news sources because it provides the links to stories in a wide range of newspapers.
Is Watch Dog going to be linked into San Jose Inside or controlled by San Jose Inside?
Watchdog and Eric,
We all read the link to the New Mexico Business Weekly. But, you see that little italic writing at the end of the article – it says the article was written by the Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal, not any media outlet in New Mexico.
And, the article says, more than once, that the late-stage negotiations are for an undisclosed site. Nowhere does it say that the site is anywhere near New Mexico. It says that Tesla was once looking for a site in New Mexico. There quite a big difference.
So, are you guys over there at the Metro illiterate or just stupid?
Just curious…
#1—no, but they will be running phone sex ads soon.
Number 10 has been tired of
searching other places for those ads hasn’t he?
#9 JC: You may be correct about WD’s assertion that the “late stage negotiations” involve a New Mexico site—although it’s impossible to say either way.
From the article: “Tesla at one time had its eye on New Mexico as a possible site for a manufacturing plant.
“The company shifted its focus from the San Jose site after it had trouble raising venture funding for the project.”
As you point out, this does not mean that the company has definitely abandoned San Jose.
You are to be commended for your sharp eye.
I’ll reply to your closing question two of my own: Do you believe anyone who makes a mistake is “illiterate or just stupid?” Didn’t your mother teach you any manners?
Eric Johnson,
You seem to want to attribute your use of the word “troubling” to the officer’s state of mind after the young man died, but that explanation is contradicted by your description of the deceased as “yet another young man,” which clearly joins the verb “troubling” with the “death of yet another young man,” and suggests to the reader that what is being reported is the latest in a string of troubling incidents. Absent evidence tying the officer(s) involved to a previous, to use your term, “taser-death,” there would be no justification of your use of the word “another.”
Nice try.
One other thing: you continue to comfortably assume that the taser caused the young man’s death, despite your knowing next-to-nothing about the factual cause of death. Did the young man have drugs in his system? If yes, then it is possible that the excitement (hyperthermia) of the fight overwhelmed his already compromised system. Did the young man hit his head in his flight from the police, or during his fight with them? Did he suffer from some pre-existing medical issue (such as cumulative heart damage from drug use)?
Even if the taser turns out to have been a contributing factor in the young man’s death, if he was, in fact, fighting the police with the ferocity indicated in the first news reports, then his death will have resulted primarily from his own actions, just as surely as if he’d been hit by a car during his run from the cops.
Troubling death? Absent some new development, not troubling to me.
# 13 finfan: The “yet another” refers only to the fact that this is the sixth person to die in San Jose after being shot with what is supposed to be a non-lethal weapon. If that fact doesn’t trouble you, so be it.
For the record, if you or anyone else infers from my brief summary that I believe the officer involved is guilty of anything, please know that was not my intention.
#14 Eric,
Your bias is obvious, and I don’t believe for a second that your intention was not to prematurely hang a guilty label on the officers, no matter what you state. I read into your article/editiorial everything that finfan did. I have no trouble with what happened since this idiot was trying to take the officers gun. I would have lots of trouble if the officer had been shot with his own weapon though.
#14-Eric,
Any death by a non-lethal weapon is troubling to me. I once supported the use of Tasers over getting shot by a gun, but I’m starting to have mixed feelings about it because as Fin Fan so aptly pointed out, if someone is on drugs, or has a heart, or other serious health condition a Taser shot can result in death. I’m not sure what the answer to this problem is because someone on PCP has the strength of 10 Police Officers, and can keep right on walking once shot by a gun, but God there has to be another answer to keeping the Police, and citizens safe from drug crazed or just plain old crazy thugs.
Nicole Lua acknowledged that her brother-in-law had used methamphetamine in the past, but she did not consider him an addict and did not believe he was recently using the drug. She added that Lua was finishing up a yearlong drug recovery program when he died.
http://www.mercurynews.com/news/ci_11698641?nclick_check=1
#4: Good point.
At least twice in recent days Watchdog has claimed to have “broken” stories that were actually first reported by other media.
Watchdog’s big Tesla Scoop? Here’s where it was first reported: http://www.bizjournals.com/albuquerque/stories/2009/02/02/daily20.html
But I do enjoy all the self-congratulation in the local blogs for these”scoops.”
“… and the troubling taser-death of yet another San Jose man at the hands of SJPD officers.”
Given that this was written before any substantive details about the incident were released, either the Editor has a secret news source within law enforcement, or the wording used here is just the latest example of SJI being used as a Metro outhouse.
“Troubling taser-death”—Prior to the autopsy being performed, SJI readers are treated to the official cause of death as determined by the editor of SJI. Remarkable. No consideration for the factual cause of death; no consideration for the circumstances, the possibility of a life-or-death situation; no consideration for the reputation of a department that trains, studies, and strives to properly serve our community. The rush to judgement demonstrated here cannot be defended, only explained—as the work of unconscionable bias and an undisciplined intellect.
Even the experts don’t know if Tasers are the reason for the deaths of people being tased. It is pretty confusing that is for sure.
Here are a few articles on it that I have read.
http://centerforinvestigativereporting.org/articles/aretaserssafe
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/10/071008080329.htm
http://www.bu.edu/phpbin/news-cms/news/?dept=1127&id=47792&template=228
http://www.siouxcityjournal.com/articles/2007/10/23/news/local/0c24b74ee001f8968625737d0001cdaa.txt
Dog: I noticed that you are not at all troubled by Richard Lua fighting the officers and attempting to wrestle one officer’s gun from the holster. If Lua was successful, killed the officer(s), and went on a rampage, you would be roasting the officers as negligent and asking why they did not use the Taser. Between you and Raji the Police simply can NEVER win, unless of course they relinquish all of their weapons and arm themselves with water guns…
Eric Johnson,
Since you are apparently tracking these things, and seem convinced that it is the taser that is killing these young men, I invite you to apply your cause-and-effect analysis to this fact:
In the previous five cases, each suspect was engaged in physically exhausting behavior prior to his death. Physically exhausting behavior (such as challenging others to fight, going berserk, struggling with the police, etc), when coupled with the ingestion of stimulants or the presence of coronary disease, are factors that can constitute a distinct cause of death (recognized by the professional medical examiners as Excited Delirium). Four of the five deaths cited involved drug use, while the other one involved an obese man who died, according to the Medical Examiner, as a result of a beating he’d received by street thugs.
Five cases, each with substantial evidence pointing towards a cause(s) of death other than the taser, and yet to you and a few others, these deaths are tallied as “taser-related,” so that they can be hyped and misused in the campaign to deprive our officers the use of this life-saving tool.
Compare the number of times the use of a taser resulted in no permanent injury to the handful of times its use was involved in death cases and the device appears impressively safe. Factor in the details of the handful of death cases and subtract from the total those in which other deadly factors were present, and the taser comes off as remarkably safe.
The question that must be asked is, if not the taser, then what? This is a question that you can’t answer, because there is no answer. Pepper spray, nightsticks, and hands-on tactics work well in all but the worst cases, but the worst cases are exactly what we are talking about. Remember, cops are not allowed to lose. They can’t decide to ignore the problem because these are typically drugged up maniacs who can’t be ignored—guys who cause 9-1-1 switchboards to light up like Christmas trees. The cop can’t say, “Gee, that fat bastard might stroke out if I take him on… I’ll let him go and hope he doesn’t hurt anyone.” Quite the contrary; that cop owns that problem.
The moment that one of these guys goes off marks the beginning of a life-threatening situation, and the only question to be decided is who—the suspect, the innocent citizen, or the officer—should be put most at risk due to his dangerous behavior. I say put the risk on the suspect. What do you say?
For as long as cops have been chasing-down and taking on young men high on narcotics or insane there have been in-custody deaths. Drug abuse is dangerous to your health, period. So is insanity. Add in criminal or dangerous behavior, and a confrontation with the police is assured. Prisoners die sitting in police cars, waiting to see a jail nurse, sleeping in their cells. That people die in custody is not surprising—it is inevitable. And for as long as there have been in-custody deaths there have been campaigns designed to strip police officers of the tools and tactics they need to safely and effectively do their job. Had there been an SJI thirty years ago your complaint would’ve been about the occasional death caused by the carotid restraint.
The need for a taser-like tool, a weapon that can be deployed from a distance by a person of any size, to take down a suspect of any size, is as close to a perfect weapon for today’s police officer as exists. With departments forced to hire jockey-sized men and women, and send them out there into understaffed divisions in one-person cars, arming each officer with a taser, a weapon as impressive for its deterrent effect as it is for its debilitating impact, is the best way we the public can demonstrate our concern for their safety.
Reality,
What I find really interesting here is that whenever someone dies of a Taser shot, their families always sue, and we never hear a word from them again. The media doesn’t tell us whether they settled for an undisclosed amount, or if they got zilch. Why is that? If I lost a lover or family member to a Taser shot by the Police, and I felt there was some type of misconduct involved, I’d be like a Pit Bull wanting to expose it until the end. And I sure wouldn’t settle for $$$$!
What the hell is $$$ going to do to resolve the fact that someone I love is dead? Regardless of the dangers linked with Tasers, I still think I’d rather be Tased than shot to death, and I have medical problems! And if I was stupid enough to hassle a Police Officer to the point that he/she Tased me, then I’d have to woman up and accept that I brought it on myself. We all chose our own path here. No Police Officer I have ever met wants to take someone’s life unless they absolutely have to.