Merc Flacks for Rosen; Attacks Carr (Again)

The Merc’s news columnist, Scott Herhold, reminded his readers in a recent piece that, “It’s no secret I think the DA is outclassed by her opponent.” It’s a disclaimer he has made on several occasions of late, while taking potshots at District Attorney Dolores Carr as she prepares to face-off for her job in June with her subordinate, Deputy DA Jeff Rosen.

This time, it was about Carr’s car: a 2007 Acura TL provided by the county. Want to know the specs? No? Too bad! Herhold reports that the $36,900 vehicle purchased three years ago has heated front seats, a power moon roof, a wood shifting knob, five-speed automatihzzzzzZZZZ . . .

Herhold admits further down that “The TL is not even the fanciest Acura. It’s relevant now mostly because Carr is in a tough re-election campaign.” Is it? Is it really relevant? There’s something sort of discomfiting about the Merc’s barage of criticism, which come off like strategically placed Rosen-campaign rhetoric in watchdog’s clothing.

Rosen, as it happens, does handle his own PR, and sent out a postscript to his endorsement from retired DA George Kennedy saying, “it’s a tad bit embarrassing, but I have to admit I drive a 1995 Honda Civic that has a BlueBook trade-in value of a whopping $1,000.”

“You are what you drive,” he went on to. Well, just a reminder: Scott Brown is not a GM pickup—he’s ruining health care reform. As Obama said, “Forget the truck.”

The Fly is the valley’s longest running political column, written by Metro Silicon Valley staff, to provide a behind-the-scenes look at local politics. Fly accepts anonymous tips.

21 Comments

  1. The San Jose Mercury News has embraced unethical conduct in coverage of the DA race, most recently on March 3rd when a Sean Webby news story (not a columnist essay) titled, “San Jose: DA won’t charge cops in videotaped beating,” quoted a member of the Merc’s own editorial board without mentioning her insider connection with the newspaper, just as though the quoted person were an independent, impartial community member.

    It’s a little odd for the Merc to be fastidious about the difference between an editorial and a columnist’s essay when it smiles on its own editorial board members serving as sources in news stories without revealing the insiders’ connections.

    http://www.mercurynews.com/search/ci_14504898?IADID

  2. “Just because the DA’s office chose not to indict the police officers does not mean that the police did the right thing,” said Michele Lew, president and CEO of Asian Americans for Community Involvement (AACI). “

    ———It also doesn’t mean that the police or DA did anything wrong———- as Mercury implies and again does not give public all the news or facts
     
    – Mercury did do wrong by violated journalistic ethics again – by NOT disclosing that main news quote was from Michele Lew who is on Mercury’s Editorial board as community person – not a quote from unbiased community leaders which by their omission leads public to believe

    Mercury routinely violates both their own published Ethics and Journalism Ethics in daily “We make up Tainted News to support Mercury opinions ” reporting.

  3. Sayeth the Fly:

    > Well, just a reminder: Scott Brown is not a GM pickup—he’s ruining health care reform.

    You say that like it’s a BAD thing!

    Ruining the Obamagogue’s “health care reform” is a GOOD thing!

    I suspect the Fly has been nibbling on a bad pile of horse manure.

    • If you are so proud of your attempts to kill health care reform, why not use your real name so all of us (and your friends and family) will know what you stand for? Come on out from the shadows and wear your pride publicly. We’ll be waiting.

      • > If you are so proud of your attempts to kill health care reform, why not use your real name so all of us (and your friends and family) will know what you stand for?

        Why not?

        A. SEIU thugs would beat me up.

        B. Government bureaucrats would illegally access government records and leak private information about me to malignant bloggers.

        C. Deranged leftist ACORN “community activists” would stalk me and my family and vandalize my car and slash the tires.

        D. Political operatives for the Obama campaign would abduct and kill my wifes pets.

        E. Obama sympathizers in the IRS or state tax bureaucracy will target me for an audit.

        Thats why not.

        • But on the plus side, your comrades would supply you with a never-ending stash of foil hats to keep you safe. Might be worth going public—the foil hats would neutralize A – E. Good luck, though. We’ll all need it if somehow you and your folks were to prevail.

  4. The Mercury is a dying newspaper. I know many, including myself, who could no longer subscribe to the Mercury and actually pay for their biased and unethical articles. I had first hand knowledge of some articles I read, and so much of what they put out as fact was wrong.

  5. Like The Fly says, not disclosing connections is a serious ethical breach of conduct for a journalist.

    So why does she not disclose she is a fan of ‘Re-Elect DA Dolores Carr’ and a fan of ‘Larry Carr’?

    Yeap

  6. It’s happens every few months: someone or another decides they’ve cracked the secret code and figured out who The Fly really is.

    The Fly does not have connections to either Dolores or Larry Carr, and is not a “fan” of anyone.

    Metro reporters and editors of course have relationships with many people in the community and utilize various means (including Facebook) to keep up with them. Certain Metro reporters (not The Fly) are “friends” with the Carrs, and with Jeff Rosen, too.

    There was no ethical breach of conduct here.

  7. The car that the DA drives does not concern me and does seem a little swiftboaty.

    The prosecution of discretionary crimes like drunk in public and resisting arrest that rely wholly on the creative writing in police reports is what concerns me. Especially when the rates of arrest for those crimes are outrageously racially disproportionate to the population of San Jose.

    64% of resisting arrest charges are against Latinos compared to their 30% of the population of the city (http://www.protectsanjose.com/blogs/1-default/128-understanding-the-problem by Ed Rast on 11/11/09)

    and

    the Latino arrest rate for public intoxication is 56.7% compared to the Latino population of San Jose which is 30%. (http://protectsanjose.com/blogs/1-neighborhood-leaders/142-look-closer-public-intoxication Ed Rast 12/2/09)

    The tough on crime routine is getting old and expensive with $10.4 billion of our dwindling public dollars for the 2008-2009 fiscal year according to the Washington Post. (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/04/AR2008050402054_pf.html)

    That is up from less than $2 billion in fy 1988-89 according to the California Legislative Analysts Office.
    http://www.lao.ca.gov/handouts/crimjust/2009/02_24_09_corrections_spending_population_reduction.pdf

    That is a 500% increase in spending over 20 years at a time when the Census Bureau reports that the rates of violent crime have dropped by 14% from:

    618 per 100,000 in 1986
    http://www2.census.gov/prod2/statcomp/documents/1991-03.pdf (see “crimes and crime rates”)

    to 533 per 100,000 in 2006.
    http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2010/tables/10s0297.pdf

    That kind of budget bloating cannot be healthy, especially for warehousing people when productive government functions like education is having its budget flayed and we are being told that we cannot afford healthcare. The role of overly aggressive prosecution by DA’s like Carr in driving up costs for the State for imprisonment and for the County by the “full employment for prosecutors” plan cannot be ignored.

    I want to hear how the candidates for DA are going to reduce spending during these tough economic times.

    • Do you think that the SJPD purposely goes out of its way to single out and arrest Hispanics who are intoxicated, while letting Whites, Blacks, and Asians
      free? Is there some inside conspiracy at the SJPD?

        • Do you think SJPD officers actively “profile” Hispanics to arrest over other ethnic groups? Is this something that the officers actually discuss behind closed doors and conspire to do? Why would they do this? Have you seen the face of the SJPD which has many minority and female officers? Are they in on this too, or is it just the white officers who are conspiring to arrest Hispanics? Is there a slight chance that the Hispanics who were arrested for being drunk in public had any responsibility for their arrest, or were they perfectly innocent and were framed by the SJPD?

        • Frank,

          No conspiracy. Just profiling.

          Profiling doesn’t require hate. Profiling means acting on an assumption of guilt based on some characteristic. And Latino, Black, and Asian officers can profile Latinos or Blacks just as effectively as white officers. But that doesn’t make it “not profiling” since the rate of arrest is double the share of the population for Latinos on drunk in public and resisting arrest. 100% overrepresentation for one racial group is the definition of racial profiling by the police, not as individuals, but as an organization. Even if there were a few individual officers that were minutemen or kkk, they would have to arrest as many Latinos as all the other officers do just by themselves and their managers would probably ask some questions.

          And given that the rates of arrest are so racially disproportionate that there must be a department-wide problem of profiling, what I’d like to know is how will the DA candidates work to make sure that they do not just reproduce that racial disproportionality in convictions and sentencing? Will one of them approach police reports with a little more critical thinking and pattern recognition than the other?

        • I will again ask you directly. Do you think there is a drinking problem within segments of the Hispanic community that contributes to this problem?

        • Frank- You will never get an answer. I think Lantinos drink more. La Raza Round Table does too. That is why they are working to change things.

        • Frank,

          According to the Department of Health and Human Services the amount of alcohol abuse in 2006, defined as drinking 5 drinks at one setting 5 or more times in a month, was as follows:
          White:  13,085,000
          Black:    1,335,000
          Asian:  246,000
          Latino:  1,900,000
          http://www.oas.samhsa.gov/NSDUH/2k6NSDUH/tabs/Sect2peTabs1to42.htm#Tab2.42A

          and

          According to the Census Bureau, in 2006 the population included the following racial groups at the following rates:
          White:  211,460,626
          Black:  34,658,190
          Asian:  10,242,998
          Latino:  35,305,818
          http://www.census.gov/popest/national/asrh/NC-EST2008-srh.html

          Therefore the rates of alcohol abuse (number people drinking more than 5 drinks in a sitting more than 5 times a month compared to their population by race) are:
          White:  6%
          Black:  4%
          Asian:  2%
          Latino: 5%

          I agree that alcoholics need and deserve help dealing with their disease, but based on these numbers, Latinos do not seem to be more likely than whites to be abusing alcohol. We are all accountable for our actions, but so are the police, and so is a District Attorney looking at patterns of extremely racially disproportionate arrest rates. My question is which candidate for DA will best be able tell the difference between cases where police are profiling people based on race and using drunk in public or resisting arrest charges to justify an attitude arrest and those where there is a legitimate arrest.

        • Thanks for the honest answer. I am Hispanic, and I believe segments of our community do have a drinking problem. Those that think they are helping our community by blaming the police are only hurting the alcoholics who need help.

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