By Sean Webby and Lisa Fernandez
For now, San Jose police won't be forced to release the 911 audiotapes documenting the fatal police shooting of a knife-wielding man last month, a City Council committee decided Wednesday.
But the Rules and Open Government Committee members indicated they feel the tapes should be released after a grand jury concludes an investigation into the fatal shooting of Daniel Pham. They also want city staff to formulate a policy that will enable 911 tapes to be released in the future, depending on the circumstance.
Police officials say the department has a blanket policy of not releasing tapes of the emergency communications. The Mercury News appealed to the council committee to order the Pham tapes released.
After hearing a plea from District Attorney Dolores Carr to keep them secret, a City Council committee voted unanimously against recommending the full council order the tapes made public.
Carr said the tapes could sway witness accounts before the grand jury and mislead the public.
"The 911 tapes are only part of the story," Carr said. "People will be forming their opinions about what happened at that address but they will only have a snippet of the puzzle."
Bert Robinson, the Mercury News managing editor, said the public interest in the case outweighed the small possibility of damage to the grand jury probe. And he said the Police Department had not justified its apparent policy of keeping all such tapes from public purview.
"It withholds the information because it can," Robinson said.
The committee authorized staff to study crafting a new policy. And the council group also left open the possibility that the recording the Mercury News was seeking could be released at the end of a grand jury investigation — if Carr or Chief Rob Davis don't raise valid objections.
After the hearing, Carr said she had yet to think about whether she supported releasing grand jury evidence to the public, barring an indictment. If the officers are indicted, the grand jury testimony becomes public record.
The newspaper wanted the public to hear what police knew — or didn't know — about the violent and mentally ill 27-year-old Daniel Pham, who on May 10 took a knife and slashed his older brother's neck.
Two police officers said that when they arrived at the Berryessa neighborhood home, they tried unsuccessfully to subdue Pham with their voices and a Taser. Pham was killed by police gunfire when he came toward them with the knife, police say. And his death reminds some in the Vietnamese community about the 2003 fatal police shooting of Bich Cau Thi Tran, a mentally ill mother who was clutching an Asian vegetable peeler. That incident sparked fears that officers weren't trained adequately to deal with nuanced cultural and mental-health issues.
Pham's family maintains his brother pleaded with police not to shoot Daniel, telling them he was mentally ill.
Reached at his home Wednesday, father Vinh Pham said he was "too busy" to speak to a reporter. The Pham family has tried to stay out of the limelight. In the backyard, where Daniel Pham was shot under an apple tree, were newly planted flowers marking the spot where he died. There was also newly installed barbed wire on the fence; the family says police officers hopped the fence before shooting Daniel Pham.
Vinh Pham has said Brian Pham has been "silent" since his younger brother was killed.
A survey of six agencies by the Mercury News revealed that only Sacramento police follow a strict no-release policy on 911 audiotapes like San Jose. .
http://www.mercurynews.com/news/ci_12513954?nclick_check=1
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