San Jose to release 9-1-1 tapes in Daniel Pham case

Tapes of the 9-1-1 call and other reports in the case of the police shooting death of a Vietnamese mentally ill man will be released, after redaction to remove names of witnesses, a San Jose city committee decided yesterday.

The San Jose Mercury News reports here that the committee, chaired by Mayor Chuck Reed, voted unanimously to release the actual 911 recordings and police reports in the Daniel Pham case. The committee decided that public interest outweighs privacy concerns in the May incident in which officers fatally shot Pham while responding to reports he had attacked a family member.

“There are lots of reasons not to release information,” Reed said at the meeting of the council’s Rules and Open Government Committee. “I don’t think any of those outweigh the public interest in getting it out.”

Others on the committee include Vice Mayor Judy Chirco, Councilwoman Nancy Pyle and Councilman Pete Constant, a retired police officer.

The tapes and police reports will be released online by noon November 13, after redacting witness names.

This latest decision is another result of Reed carefully walking a tight rope between satisfying the police union happy and preserving transparency in government work.

Last month, a council majority led by Reed narrowly rejected a proposal from a community task force calling for routine release of many police records. Police had opposed the proposal, arguing it would make witnesses and victims fearful of coming forward. The sole Viet member of the city council, Madison Nguyen, and three others voted against the Reed-led bloc.

Richard Konda of the Asian Law Alliance, one of several groups that had requested the records from the city, noted that “many members of the community have lost faith in the police department,” reports the Mercury News.

Daniel Pham, 27, was fatally shot by police last May. He had attacked his brother with a knife, and the family had called 9-1-1.

When police arrived at the scene, they claimed they didn’t know Pham was a mental patient. The family, however, insisted that they were screaming and yelling, in English, to the police, that Pham was mentally ill. Police shot and killed Pham.

Last month, a Santa Clara County grand jury in a closed session last month declined to indict any of the police officers involved. The D.A. Dolores Carr, had earlier said that she has a long-standing belief that grand jury investigations into police shootings should not be open to the public.

In 2003, young Vietnamese mother Bich Cau Thi Pham was killed by San Jose police for holding a vegetable peeler smaller than a regular steak knife.

Two weeks ago, a video was published of two San Jose police officers beating and Tasing Vietnamese student Phuong Ho while the later writhed on the floor, moaning and crying.