From Fault Lines Issue # 9: Law enforcement in San Jose is taking heat for putting its citizens at serious risk. Between 1990 and 2000 San Jose had a higher ratio of killings by police to the overall homicide rate than any other of the largest 50 U.S. cities. In the wake of the killing of a young woman, shot for waving a vegetable peeler in her kitchen, tasers were brought into use by the San Jose Police Department, theoretically in order to lower the rate of use of deadly force. A report soon to be issued by the Coalition for Justice and Accountability says that since tasers were introduced, the rate of killings by the SJPD, instead of decreasing, showed a dramatic increase. Additionally, from April until September of last year, tasers— which are potentially lethal—were used 90 times. Tasers were used on mentally ill people in situations that then escalated, ending up in two deaths at the hands of police.

In addition, an undercover agent, Michael Walker, is now on trial for the killing of Rudy Cardenas, who was unarmed when Walker shot him in the back in downtown San Jose a year ago. The San Jose Main Jail, meanwhile, which houses 4,000 inmates, is a murky world of violence and abuse. For a glimpse at what goes on behind the locked doors of the Main Jail, Fault Lines acquired interviews with a former staff member, Nancy Rutherford, and a former inmate, Martín Rodriguez. Rodriguez is seeking legal recourse. Read Peter Maiden's Faultlines Article