San Jose: Parents speak out about life, death of woman shot and killed by police while holding drill

[alp227]

SAN JOSE -- For their daughter's entire life, Jim and Victoria Showman labored tirelessly to help with her severe bipolar disorder. The work went right up until the final minutes.

Jim Showman's last words to 19-year-old Diana came Aug. 14 in an early-morning phone call: He reminded her to take her psychiatric medication.

The same morning, Victoria Showman was talking with the intake director at San Andreas Regional Center in hopes of enrolling her daughter for services aimed at helping developmentally disabled people live independently. She needed a document from her husband, and he took a break from his job as a systems engineer to go back to the Blossom Hill Road duplex where his daughter lived with him.

His path was blocked by police cars. What he didn't know until hours later was that Diana was mortally wounded by a police officer during a confrontation on busy Blossom Hill Road. As the Showmans struggle with her death, they are also questioning whether the shooting was necessary, and why police wouldn't let them be by her side in her final moments.

full: http://www.mercurynews.com/crime-courts/ci_26412630/san-jose-parents

[Initech]

1. This is quickly devolving from a series of incidents to full on mass murder by police.

How did things get so out of hand?

[atreides1]

5. Let's see

The lack of will on the part of prosecutors to view a police officer as a viable suspect based on the need of having to work with the police!

Juries that fail to make a decision based on the evidence...and only seem to consider the badge!

Police unions that will defend anything that a cop does, no matter what!

Fear!

[Initech]

6. I'd say fear + our increasingly lax gun laws.

[bluesbassman]

2. This part is disturbing...

As it happens, Okuma (the cop who shot her), a 13-year department veteran, was one of a battery of SJPD officers who had undergone what is known as Crisis Intervention Team training, which focuses on mental-health response.

So much for specialized training.

[KamaAina]

3. That's at least the second person with a psychiatric disability gunned down by SJPD

in the slightly less than five years I've been here.

http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_12343463

"Don't kill him! He's mentally ill!"

That's what Brian Duy Pham, 29, shouted as police officers rushed into his Berryessa neighborhood home just about noon Sunday, according to family members.

His brother, Daniel, had just attacked him with a knife, and his girlfriend was still inside the home. But lodged in this Vietnamese-born family's memories was the high-profile police shooting of Bich Cau Thi Tran.

The mentally ill Vietnamese mother was holding an Asian vegetable peeler, which police mistook for a cleaver, when a San Jose officer shot and killed her in July 2003, igniting the Vietnamese community at the time over issues of mental health and cultural sensitivities.

[Arkansas Granny]

4. With several incidents like this in the news in just the last few weeks, it does seem like police

policy now is to shoot first and ask questions later.

[atreides1]

7. Why not?

If you knew that you were going to be able to get away with it, why wouldn't you take advantage of it?

The cops know that the DA's office isn't going to do their best job trying to get an indictment...even if one is handed down the prosecutor has a second chance to throw the case...and even if the officer is convicted, the case will be tossed out on appeal(the reason for which will be provided by the prosecutor)!

At worst the cop will get a slap on the wrist, have to undergo a psyche evaluation, paid leave...but in the end back out on the street to do it all over again!!!

[hifiguy]

8. The time is long past for a definitive examination

and accounting of just how many unarmed and harmless civilians are being killed each year by trigger-happy, neo-fascist police forces in this country. Jayzus, this is unbelievable and positively monstrous.

[hifiguy]

9. Kick for visibility.

This needs to be read.

[WillyT]

10. K & R !!!