Roundtable On SDPD Deadly Shooting, Toothless Water Restrictions, Small Fire Crews

MARK SAUER: 2012 fatal shooting of Victor Ortega by a San Diego police officer was ruled justified by the D A, but a federal judge has challenged the officer's versions of events. Where are the water cops? San Diego adopted tough water restrictions, but nobody has been hired to enforce them. And the proposal to cut some four-person fire crews in half to improve response times isn't sitting well with the fire fighters union. I'm Mark Sauer, and the K P B S roundtable starts now. Welcome. It's Friday December fifth, I'm Mark Sauer. And joining me at the K P B S roundtable today are ten news investigator producer J W August. Hi J W. JW AUGUST: Hey Mark. MARK SAUER: K P B S enterprise reporter Claire Trageser. Claire, good to have you. CLAIRE TRAGESER: Thanks Mark. MARK SAUER: And reporter Liam Dillon with Voice of San Diego. Hi Liam, welcome back. LIAM DILLON: Hi Mark. MARK SAUER: Well, it was a domestic violence call in Mira Mesa that turned tragic Victor Ortega was killed in June 2012 by San Diego police officer Jonathan McCarthy. A year later a year later D A Bonnie Dumanis ruled the killing justified, but new a federal judge is raising serious questions about the officer's claim that he fired in self-defense. Now J W, federal Judge Larry Burns has ruled in this case. Bring us up to date. What is the status of this now? He is allowing this family's lawsuit to go forward. JW AUGUST: Right. There was a number of claims they made and he pulled a few of them out. But he kept two very strong claims in there that there was the possibility that the officer, Officer McCarthy, violated the fourth and the fourteenth amendment rights of Ortega. MARK SAUER: And these are basically constitutional rights that -- JW AUGUST: Fair trial. If you're dead you can't have a fair trial. And abuse of power. MARK SAUER: Okay. Sort of walk us through the events briefly here. This was a domestic call unfortunately many such calls in a city the size of San Diego, common calls. JW AUGUST: Right. A lot of them. MARK SAUER: Officers respond in Mira Mesa to the home there. JW AUGUST: Right. MARK SAUER: What happened? JW AUGUST: McCarthy saw Ortega running and started to chase him. MARK SAUER: So he would be the husband accused of abuse in the 911 call. JW AUGUST: Judge Burns laid out in his decision on this part of it exactly what happened. They got in a fight about him not working and not doing enough to support the family. It escalated. He swung at her, hit her lip. She was bleeding. She called the police. MARK SAUER: So the cops are called. JW AUGUST: Right. That's it. MARK SAUER: So the officers get there and Ortega takes off and Officer McCarthy gives chase. JW AUGUST: Right. And there is a lot of things that happen in this that don't follow police procedure which is troubling. One - the cops are not supposed to take off. They are supposed to figure out what's going on at the scene before they start chasing people. I'm not so sure McCarthy had a clear grasp on what was happening, but he took off after the guy which might be a natural instinct for a younger officer. The whole thing took less than a minute. A minute after they pulled up, Ortega was dead. Two shots close range. One in the gut. One in the neck. MARK SAUER: Now, there were witnesses in this case, but they weren't eye witnesses. They heard it through a fence. JW AUGUST: Right. Ear witness. MARK SAUER: You talked to these folks? JW AUGUST: Not all of them. But I talked to some teenagers on the other side of the fence. MARK SAUER: Was it a wooden fence? JW AUGUST: Wood. Wood fence. MARK SAUER: You can't see through the fence? JW AUGUST: No, but you surely can hear. I had the camera go on the other side, bang around a little bit and you can hear it. I have bad hearing and I could hear it. They were right on top of him. Plus this kind of -- like there was apartments up here. There was another witness up here that heard this, but nobody saw anything. MARK SAUER: All right. Now, why does Officer McCarthy say he shot Ortega in this instance; again a fatal shooting. JW AUGUST: Protect himself. His life was in danger. MARK SAUER: Okay. How so? JW AUGUST: He thought that Ortega was coming after his gun. The story is different depending who you talk to whether it was his gun he had in his ankle. MARK SAUER: His secondary gun, not his service rifle. JW AUGUST: Right. Or his primary weapon, so there is a difference. The police's own investigators don't agree with what McCarthy said. MARK SAUER: Okay. So let's go further along in the process here. Normally the district attorney will take a look at the shooting, do their own investigation. It took a year, that's a long time it seems. JW AUGUST: Yes, it is. MARK SAUER: And the D A Bonnie Dumanis came back and said this is a justified shooting which is not uncommon in police shootings in this city or any other city as we've seen in all of the national headlines here. JW AUGUST: Of course. MARK SAUER: Missouri, New York, Chicago. JW AUGUST: They didn't find any reason to look any further, but even in the district attorney's report there was -- I was talking to Liam before this, if I had known now when that came out I might have asked more questions; like for instance, normally on a scene like that a senior officer walk the scene with the officer involved in the shooting, they didn't in this case; why didn't they do it? Because the body was there that is what the D A's report says. If I had thought about that I would have certainly asked their office, okay why, why didn't you walk through immediately and debrief this officer what happened. MARK SAUER: Let's take a minute here. LIAM DILLON: This is actually interesting in the light of current events and what policemen are doing now with the body cams program which -- we would have an eyewitness. The officer would have been wearing a witness at the time which would have presumably shed a lot more clarity. MARK SAUER: Let's talk about that for just a second. Let's talk about that now. There is a pilot program officers are being fitted with body cameras. They engage a suspect - in this instance they arrive at this call - they turn that camera on and it simply records everything that happens. What is interesting the current partner policy that information, even in cases like this when there is a dispute, would not be made public. So clearly there is a lot of community interest and concern about what happened. And we would have to trust the police department that what the officer said or what was captured on the camera was what the reality was without seeing that in public. MARK SAUER: Which makes you wonder what == CLAIRE TRAGESER: The police chief has said on a case by case basis. So it seems in cases where maybe it clears the police officer when there are questions about what is, happening she might be willing to release it in those instances. LIAM DILLON: It's entirely at her -- CLAIRE TRAGESER: It's up to her, yeah. MARK SAUER: Then the question would be and none of us are lawyers, then the question would be in a lawsuit situation such as this, could the plaintiffs for the family, the widow in this case get such a tape. Of course, speculation what the video would have shown had there been a body cam. JW AUGUST: Absolutely. MARK SAUER: So let's get back to this specific case. Judge Burns - the federal judge - he ruled that because of the testimony that he heard, he is going to allow this federal lawsuit to go onward even though there is no criminal case because he is concerned these questions are raised about these officers versions of events squaring with the evidence. JW AUGUST: He says this throughout his ruling, if a jury heard this they would have reasonable cause to believe again and again, he said this on the fourth and fourteenth amendment allegations by the plaintiff’s attorney. MARK SAUER: Okay. Very good. Now, I do want to take a step away from this case here and we'll get back to it in a second. We were talking about these national headlines right now and the fatal police shootings. I do want to, just for benefit of our audience, go over a few figures here. In 2013 in Great Britain there were zero police shootings. Germany just eight. Canada averages about 12 a year. For the United States the F B I for 2013 reported 461 fatal police shootings in the United States. Some sources say it was much higher than that. I wonder, we talk about body cams. Maybe we talk police techniques and processes in a tragedy such as this. Why do we have so many in this country and why do these other western developed countries have so few? JW AUGUST: Gun laws. And there fact it's not so much -- it bothers me about the shooting -- MARK SAUER: In other words we have great access to guns in our society and others don't. JW AUGUST: Absolutely. And the other thing that is troubling, it's troubling to have so many shootings, but how many times does the government find the officer was not justified. I just cannot believe the percentages. How many times in San Diego County has the sitting district attorney brought a case -- MARK SAUER: Right. And I think it was like in the last 20 years that one case. And of course the jury favored the officer. JW AUGUST: Not that racism has anything to do with it but it was a black officer and a white citizen the case was brought on. MARK SAUER: Yeah. It is very troubling. Anyway let's get back -- we’ll wrap this up. We have a few seconds left on this topic. Judge Burns ruling the case can go forward they are going to have a settlement conference now to see if there is some sort of settlement, but the city wanted a summary judgment. They wanted the judge to dismiss this case. JW AUGUST: The city attorney wants it all off of the books. MARK SAUER: And the city attorney, by the way, you asked for comment on the story on this. JW AUGUST: Basically can't talk about the civil litigation. MARK SAUER: Because the suit is ongoing. So where are we now? The judge will have another hearing at some point. JW AUGUST: Right. Now this hearing is closed. We don't know what goes on inside. I asked the plaintiff's attorney can I find out and she said no. This thing is very confidential we can't find out. MARK SAUER: The next thing we may hear about is a settlement. JW AUGUST: Or they move forward. MARK SAUER: Or they move to a trial. All right. Very good. We will be looking on more reports on that story of course. MARK SAUER: Everyone knows with the recent rains this week, California is suffering from years of severe drought so the city of San Diego initiated mandatory water restrictions on November first. We might ask what took so long, but the city has yet to hire people to enforce those restrictions. Now Claire, let's start this segment by telling us who uses the most water around here. CLAIRE TRAGESER: Well, it's Rancho Santa Fe, the unincorporated neighborhood in San Diego. MARK SAUER: Very affluent neighborhood, as everyone knows. CLAIRE TRAGESER: Up until last month they were actually the highest waters users on average in the state. New numbers came out just a few days ago and they dropped down to number three. MARK SAUER: Those new ones, for the record, is Palm Springs and a suburb of Anaheim no one has ever heard of. All right. So this very affluent area and L you worked on this same story. New York Times did a story on it, L A Times; this has become national news, drought-stricken California who is gushing their water on their lawns and slacking their horses. What are some of the reasons? They have big lawns. LIAM DILLON: Just a fun fact - if you ever want to meet people in Rancho Santa Fe go to the post office because they don't have post boxes at their individual houses. Everyone has to go to the post office to pick up their mail every day. So I hung out for about four hours outside of the post office to ask people hey why are you using so much water. And everyone was really defensive. MARK SAUER: They were sensitive about it. LIAM DILLON: I expected to get some people to say hey who are you to question, my water use. Or this is my property I can use as much water as I want as long as I pay for it. I didn't get any of that. It was more oh we're cutting back. But the numbers don't say that. Well, we are. It was just lot of defensiveness. MARK SAUER: So are we going to see people digging out an acre of lawn and putting in zero scape garden? What's going on. CLAIRE TRAGESER: Well, the city of San Diego would love it if people would do that. They do residential surveys and someone from the city's public utilities department was saying well, you know we have these other non-grass lawn options if you want to do that. But I don't know if that will be happening in Rancho Santa Fe. MARK SAUER: Yeah there would be a lot of gravel up there not just taking out a little patch in. Front they've got a long way to go. They've got horses, they've got big spreads. LIAM DILLON: Fruit trees. Citrus trees is a big history of that there. Big rolling lawns. We're talking really, really high water bills. Some of the folks I was talking to were saying for two months it was 1500 dollars, 1700 dollars; two grand, three grand. Just a ton of money. JW AUGUST: Poor folks can't afford that; they are going to cut back. MARK SAUER: Nice segway. Let's get back to the city restrictions. It's a mandatory order. What are we supposed to be doing right now? CLAIRE TRAGESER: Yes. The main thing - you're only supposed to water three days a week for no more than seven minutes at a time early in the morning or after the sun goes down. There are other things about no ornamental fountains are to be turned on. When you can water plants. When you can wash your car when you wash it yourself, things like that. Odd numbers designated days. Even numbers other designated day. MARK SAUER: Right. So now we have a team of water cops going on making sure these water restrictions are being enforced. CLAIRE TRAGESER: Not so far. The public utilities department says so far they don't have anyone who is able to go out and pro activity look for people breaking these rules and the reason for that is they need to hirer these people, but they are only temporary employees. They said they wouldn't add anything to their budget when they want to these mandatory restrictions, so that means they have to wait for people to leave jobs so that then they can hire people temporarily MARK SAUER: So they can only hire through attrition. Now, the city council did declare this is a crisis we're in a drought situation. We're in our third maybe fourth year now depending on when the calendar starts here, but we're waiting for astriction to actually hire some enforcement folks. CLAIRE TRAGESER: Right. And the water resources manager says he's hoping it will happen this month in December, maybe then we will see people going out and in the meantime they do have other ways that they say -- MARK SAUER: I wanted to talk about that. So let's see. It's kind of neighbor turning in neighbor calling down the street whispering hey the guy down here. CLAIRE TRAGESER: That seems to be one of the ways. You can call, e-mail. There is an app for your mobile phone and you report on your neighbors or anyone you see running their sprinklers at the wrong time or sprinklers that are broken. Then once someone gets a complaint about them they receive a letter from the city saying hey you're breaking these rules you need to stop. The city then also isn't able to go out and say we sent this letter have you stopped what you're doing, they rely on the person who originally made the report to come back in two weeks- say they are still doing it at which case the city might call them or go talk to them in person. If they still don't fix it, then the code compliance will send them a letter giving them ten days to fix it and if they still don't fix it, then they can get fined up to 500 dollars. But the city points out this is very rare. Usually when the people get the letters they stop right away. MARK SAUER: Freak out a little bit, then they do something about it. JW AUGUST: Neighbor on neighbor. I like it. MARK SAUER: Yeah, right. You talk about disputes in neighborhoods. Well, you can turn around and kind of do this proactively. You can ask the city come out check it out if I have leaks. Tell me how I'm doing. Give me a report card. In your feature you talked to someone I believe and we have a clip here. Victor Sandoval of the public utilities department measuring water usage at a house at Pacific Beach. Let's hear a little bit of that (AUDIO) Right now your water usage is 847 gallons a day that seems like a lot of water. Two adults, we'll put you guys at 60 gallons. That's 120 gallons a day. Put it at 40 gallons for the kids. So we're looking at about 200 gallons a day, yes. The other 600 gallons are probably going to be the outside. So we're going to double check all of that. We're going to look. My lawn doesn't look like 600, I know. I know. MARK SAUER: All right. So again they were in Pacific beach not Rancho Santa Fe. CLAIRE TRAGESER: They were using more than -- it turns out it didn't seem like they had any leaks inside. They weren't using that much water inside, but they had a lot of broken sprinklers. JW AUGUST: I remember that. You found leaking ones, real bad. CLAIRE TRAGESER: The guy from the public utilities department going out he turns on each of the sprinklers looks and says that one is broken. I was thinking why did you need someone from the city to come out and say yeah that looks broke. MARK SAUER: When it's broken it's leaking all of the time or not efficient? CLAIRE TRAGESER: No, just when it's on, it's pouring water all over the sidewalk. Not spraying water, but dumping it out. MARK SAUER: This is a road thing. How many of us day to day if we have sprinklers on timers, or water our gardens, do we think much about our actual usage, how long are you taking a shower? How often are you taking a shower, watering the plants et cetera? It's something the average person really isn't thinking that much about. CLAIRE TRAGESER: Right. And this family had their sprinklers set according to the new water restrictions. MARK SAUER: So they were aware of it. CLAIRE TRAGESER: Yeah, they had them on a little bit too long. But they did have them set but when the sprinklers were on, they were pouring out water instead of spraying out water. I don't think a lot of people know the city has this survey program and anyone can call up and it's free right now. They have a three-week waiting list because they only have two employees that go out. But they will go through your whole house and show your where your faucets are using water and all of that. MARK SAUER: All right. Couple seconds left. We did do pretty well though with the push this summer and we did cut back some on our water usage overall, have we not? CLAIRE TRAGESER: Yeah the city of San Diego's numbers are pretty low I think 326 out of 400 of water companies average of 76 gallons a day. It will be interesting to see when the November numbers come out when the mandatory water restrictions started whether we've continued to go down because of those restrictions. MARK SAUER: We're going to shift to another topic here that talks again about the city budget, things got so bad in cash strapped San Diego a few years ago the city initiated brown outs for fire stations. Fire trucks and crews were idol for certain periods. Now the brown outs soon ended but looking for ways to save money on new fire stations and improve response times the city turned to a consultant. The proposal - cut four-person fire crews down to two and dispatch them in pickup trucks, so Liam let's start by telling us what the situation is with fire crews in the city. Set it up for us. We've got stations that are equidistant and strategically placed. LIAM DILLON: Right. MARK SAUER: Planned around the city in four member crews you get a call and out they go. LIAM DILLON: So (CHECK AUDIO) said this is not enough we need a lot more fire crews around the city, roughly 20 to meet the response times goals of the city which is getting to a call within seven minutes 30 seconds 90 percent of the time. MARK SAUER: The key to that is, and we will get into some of the figures but most of the calls aren't fires. Nearly 90 percent are medical emergency. LIAM DILLON: Right. 80 percent of the calls last year were for medical reasons. MARK SAUER: We're talking heart attacks. We're talking critical medical reasons, situations we've got to get there. That's why paramedics are on the crew. LIAM DILLON: Right. The consultant said there is no way you're building 20 new fire stations at 12 million dollars a pop. So maybe we can serve some of these areas by making these two-person crews which should be a lot easier. The city has piloted one in Encanto and that costs 700 grand. So you put 700 grand on one hand and 12 million on the other - that is a big distinction. MARK SAUER: And again the two person -- one of those people is paramedic, trained medical person, and they are going out in much smaller vehicles. LIAM DILLON: That's right. MARK SAUER: I think a lot of people wonder if you called 911 or had someone in your family had to call 911 especially on a medical thing, a fire truck shows up, they are equidistant. They have to be there. LIAM DILLON: There are more fire personal in the city than say ambulance. We have these fire personnel in the city. There aren't as many fires as there used to be, you might as well use them. They go to medical emergencies. And you know on each crew there is at least one person cross trained as paramedic. MARK SAUER: So they do the emergency thing. They call in. They say we're going to load then generally an ambulance comes a few minutes later, they stabilize the person. The patient goes off to the hospital - that's a pretty typical call. LIAM DILLON: Yeah. MARK SAUER: Sounds great. Smaller vehicle, two people, we're saving money getting out there the response times are better; what is not to like? LIAM DILLON: You have to ask the fire union because they are the ones that seem to have the most trouble with it. Their argument is that essentially since this crew is only 12 hours a day you're not getting as much service from a four person crew. The folks in Encanto deserve a four person crew as much as the rest of the city do- things of that nature. So they are basically saying look it's standard to have four people on an engine and people to respond and that's what we should have. CLAIRE TRAGESER: Any sense whether people in Encanto know or care that they are being served by a two person crew instead of a four person crew? LIAM DILLON: There is a gentleman who was a former high level guy in the fire department who lives in Encanto. He's been very, very happy with what's been going on so far. MARK SAUER: Really? LIAM DILLON: Because response times have been cut in half according to the initial numbers so that means people are getting there more quickly. MARK SAUER: You mentioned this pilot program started in July, so I imagine as part of that surveys analysis. LIAM DILLON: Absolutely so there isn't just the numbers. Obviously getting there is a just a number, but you also want to evaluate what the medical attention these folks are receiving, it’s better or worse? Or to what extent; there are more details that are supposed to be coming out too. JW AUGUST: It's a vote in the hand two in the bush. Is it worth it getting those people out there now and getting coverage? So it kind of makes sense but I also understand why the union would want more people on the trucks, that's what unions do. MARK SAUER: They're protecting jobs, want more personnel. JW AUGUST: That's why we have the system we have now that's evolved over the years. I've wondered why do we have to send paramedics out on every run or firemen on every paramedic run. CLAIRE TRAGESER: So what was it, the head of the firefighters union wrote to Voice of San Diego; is that right? And he made this argument, it's actually you're paying double or something like that. LIAM DILLON: Right his argument is that since these crews only run for 12 hours a day opposed to four person crews running all day their cost is actually more than you would get on sort of a per person basis than you would get from a four person crew, actually a tax payer hit to use these crews. Again, certainly in the absolute, you're paying less than you would be paying for a four person crew based on a per capita basis. Tax payers aren't served as well. MARK SAUER: Now, you did a fact check on that. Took a look at what his claims were; do they hold water? LIAM DILLON: Well, it's misleading. What he's basically doing is divorcing the capital cost of building a new fire station from this process. And the city have basically a pickup truck, it's a lot easier to house that than it would a four person engine crew. So right now the city is paying minimal cost to house this four person truck I'm sorry this two person crew in Encanto would have to spend roughly 11 million dollars to build a new fire station in that community. So if you don't talk about the capital cost you're really not seeing the whole picture. MARK SAUER: I see. Are there other middle opportunities here? I know in my neighborhood here, not far from where we are in Del Cerro they refurbished and spent a lot of money on the fire station 31 there at one time. And for about 14 months they housed the crew there and ran their calls right out of a Quonset hut on some city-owned land; don't they have that sort of a middle cost option? The city has a lot of parcels they can set up temporary places? LIAM DILLON: One is being replaced with a full station in Mission Valley. Then there is a new one coming, supposed to come on January first, relatively soon in Skyline, which will also be sort of this trailer situation where there is some city-owned land there and there will be a temporary four person engine crew running out of that station. MARK SAUER: Okay, but the fire fighters union -- LIAM DILLON: Likes that. MARK SAUER: Because they have the four crew. LIAM DILLON: That's right and their argument again is that is full service for the community. MARK SAUER: Now, the fire fighter union folks have an ally at city hall, right? LIAM DILLON: More than one. MARK SAUER: But one powerful counsel woman Marti Emerald and she is the public safety committee. LIAM DILLON: Mm-hmm. MARK SAUER: Her ball wick here, and what is she saying she's kind of siding with the fire fighters. LIAM DILLON: Roughly six to eight months ago when this big conversation happened this is before the Encanto crew was funded in the budget. So this is before, sort of, the benefit experience. But her argument at the time was I would rather spend two million bucks, roughly two and a half million dollars on this temporary crew in temporary four person crew in Skyline than the 600 grand, 700 grand in Encanto. The new mayor Kevin Faulconer did both, but her choice is if I had to choose one, I would chose the Skyline version. In doing so, she really used some misleading terminology and arguments to make the case that the crews were a bad thing and that, sort of, did a bit of disservice to the argument. MARK SAUER: All right. We have a few seconds left. Where do we stand now? When will the counsel get another report or see what the empirical situation is from the fire department? LIAM DILLON: When I spoke to the fire chief he said within a few months. Also interesting interestingly the major has (CHECK AUDIO) his intention to a second two person crew. It's unsure where that will go but he definitely wants to do it. He is encouraged with the results. MARK SAUER: Okay. As Claire raised the issue, they will get feedback and surveys from the public. JW AUGUST: Quick question. How about long term, the actual fire stations, anything on the pipeline in that? LIAM DILLON: There are a few. They just got some money from this bond, the most resent bond, and they are starting to fund some designs one particularly in City Heights around Home Avenue. MARK SAUER: All right. We're out of time. That does wrap up another week of stories on 24 K P B S roundtable. I'd like to thank my guests J W August of 10 news. Claire Trageser of K P B S news and Liam Dillon of Voice of San Diego. A reminder all of the stories we discussed today are on our website K P B S dot org, I'm Mark Sauer. Thanks for joining us today on the round table.