Crime

The first thing you notice when you are in the eye-in-the-sky at one of Gilroy’s busiest department stores are the shoes people are wearing when they walk in.

From the Sheriff's Department:  On December 14, 2016, at approximately 09:31am, the Valley Transit Authority (VTA) received a bomb threat. Jonathan Keim, of San Jose, called in the threat to VTA and also notified various media outlets of his intentions to blow up a public...

Nov. 16A family cat on Lilly Avenue was shot with a pellet gun and sustained serious injuries. Nov. 21 3 a.m. Attempted burglary at the Gilroy Medical Pharmacy at 700 W. Sixth St.  An alarm was triggered and the burglar fled. Overnight: A suspect drove onto the lawn at Crest Hill Park and spun donuts, causing serious damage to the lawn. 11 a.m. A woman stole two gold necklaces valued at $1,540 from a First Street store. 1:40 p.m. Two women stole numerous clothing items from the Ralph Lauren store. When employees tried to stop them from leaving without paying, they ran away. The theft was monitored on the store’s video camera. 7:02 p.m. Some children spotted three people breaking into unlocked cars at Greystone Court and Keystone Avenue. 9:55 p.m. Someone broke into a car and stole $1,000 cash on San Miguel Street. The suspect may have dropped a cell phone found at the scene. Police are investigating. Nov. 22 2:33 a.m. A suspect bought a $350 Samsung Galaxy phone at an online site. When he showed up to meet the victim at Eigleberry Street and Sixth Street, he pulled a gun and stole the phone. 1:22 p.m. The Dodge dealership had a 2016 Dodge Dart stolen from its lot on Auto Mall Drive. 1:30 p.m. Someone stole 16 bottles of cologne from the Abercrombe and Fitch outlet store valued at $1,500. Nov. 23 10 p.m. Someone walked out with $3,000 of tools from Home Depot. Police are reviewing video. Nov. 24 8:32 a.m. A 58-year-old man called police to say that he was beaten up by four neighbors on El Cerrito Way. When officers arrived he told them that he had been attacked by demons and was holding his groin and rolled around on the front doorstep. He was arrested on narcotics charges. 8:55 a.m. A woman left her 2016 Honda Pilot running in her driveway on Siena Drive to warm it up. When she left her house, her grey 2016 Honda Pilot was stolen, along with two Michael Kors purses and her credit cards. 2 a.m. A red 2002 Toyota Camry was broken into on Hecker Pass Road and a $1,200 grey Macbook with a brown cover on it was stolen. 8:53 p.m. A man reportedly grabbed a woman and tried to steal her car at a Leavesley Road business. Police were called. When they arrived they said Juan Camargo, 18, waved a metal pipe at them and was arrested on suspicion of assault 10 p.m. Someone broke into a Welburn Avenue home when the victim had left for only an hour and they stole three  X Box 1 consoles and a Nintendo Wii valued at $1,900. Nov. 256:30 a.m. Someone broke into two cars at Renz Lane and stole a $200 breast pump and messenger bags. The property was recovered. The suspects weren’t. 2:56 p.m. A man stole items from Walmart, stuffing candy into his pockets. Loss Prevention contacted him and he threatened them with bodily harm. He dropped a lock that he said he took from a propane storage unit outside the building. He then ran away, making off with a portable heater valued at $60 and $20 worth of candy.           

Hoping to recoup victims’ money, a search has begun for dozens of people scammed in Gilroy by an undocumented immigrant imprisoned for stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from other Mexican immigrants.

Gary Wright, 58, from Albuquerque, was found dead in his car after 1 a.m. on Highway 101 Tuesday after his 2012 GMC left the road and crashed into a culvert.

One of two fugitives who escaped from the Santa Clara County Jail was caught in Antioch Tuesday night when he fell through the ceiling of his sister's home, according to the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Department.

A 35-year-old San Jose woman was arrested Sunday night in Gilroy on suspicion of helping a an escaped fugitive evade police this week.

Responding to a tip that a fugitive who escaped from jail Thanksgiving eve was in town, Gilroy Police and Santa Clara County Sheriff's Deputies surrounded the Days Inn at 8292 Murray Ave., but didn't find the suspect.

Every time I hear about a police shooting I think the same thing: if only the people complaining had a chance to walk a mile in a cop’s shoes.I’ve done it and you can too. It will change you forever.Both the Gilroy Police Department and the Santa Clara Sheriff’s have ride along programs where you can do a shift with a cop and see first hand what they face. You will never look at police the same way.I’ve done ride alongs with agencies across the area and I’ve also taken the Citizens Police Academy in Santa Cruz. My conclusion is that we expect the people in blue to be superhuman, but they are, like the rest of us, only human. Most of them, however, border on superhuman in the challenges they face every day and the way they resolve them peacefully.When you consider that most of us get our information about policing from TV dramas where officers solve cases in a half an hour and do impossible things like shoot a bad guy in the arm to make them drop their gun, it’s easy to see that we often judge them much too harshly.You can sign up for a 12-week, once-a-week course with Gilroy Police (info on the GPD website), an opportunity that I strongly recommend. In Santa Cruz I got to do a staged car chase, arrest “suspects” and shoot in the firing range.The first thing you feel driving in a police car, is that it’s like you have a giant target on your back. There are plenty of people out there who hate police, and even though you are armed, you feel like a sitting duck. There’s virtually nothing to stop someone who hates cops and has access to one of the 315 million guns in America from taking a shot. Cops told me they don’t feel like that, but as a civilian sitting in that car, I sure did.The second thing you learn is that police training is incredibly difficult. You will fail often. Do one of their drills where they have to figure out if they are shooting at an innocent or a bad guy, a real life video game, and you realize it takes Olympian skill and judgment to make the right call. It’s much easier to Monday morning quarterback those situations.The next thing you realize is that many of the people you stop are rude and think you are in the wrong, even when it’s clear they are. A good half the people you stop greet you with malice, and frankly, many of them are people we don’t interact with in daily life. They are on drugs, they are criminals, they are violent and after spending a day with them and an officer, you will thank your lucky stars for the officers who deal with them every day.On a Santa Cruz ridealong recently, I watch a 6-foot-5-inch, 300-pound man attack the 5-foot-5-inch cop I was riding with, while yelling racial epithets at him. The officer asked the man to get off the sidewalk blocking access to a pizzeria; the man refused and got belligerent.For a minute, I was scared for my life, but more scared for the officer. I thought the bigger man could easily grab his gun and things could get violent quickly. I was digging in, getting ready to help the officer if he needed it, when in the blink of an eye, the officer had the man down on the ground and handcuffed, like a martial arts master. That was really superhero stuff. Even more amazing was the fact that the officer remained cool, calm and polite with the man, even when the man, an African American, was calling the officer, a Mexican-American who was once an undocumented immigrant, a “wetback” and using worse terms to provoke him. The officer was used to mistreatment and told me he felt sorry for the man, an alcoholic, and treated him kindly all the way to jail. I’m not saying it’s always this way, but I would argue that it is 99 percent of the time. Yes, there are some unjustified shootings and some cops who use the law to benefit themselves. And yes, we need video cameras to help police the police. But in most cases, the cameras will back the police. People will realize that cops don’t go out to intentionally shoot someone and that the cops would prefer to defuse situations without violence, so they can go home to their families at the end of their workdays, just like the rest of us. They have a lot more challenges to face every day than we do.                 

Rosalinda Gerardo loaded up her SUV in her San Martin driveway on Oct. 25 and went inside her house to get her twin 9-year-old girls and her 5-year-old daughter to bring them to school.When she came back outside, the black Chevy Suburban was gone.“I just stood there looking and went, ‘Oh my gosh, what is going on?’” she said. “I thought maybe my husband took it to get gas, but when I called him, he didn’t have it. He walked to work. If it wasn’t happening to me, I wouldn’t have believed it.”Her vehicle was stolen, but it gets worse. The car was specially fitted for her daughter, Jocelyn, who has a rare, painful and debilitating condition in which her flesh calcifies to bone and she can’t function without a wheelchair, glasses, hearing aids and a computer that lets her communicate.It was all in the Suburban.“It was horrible,” she said. I’m just thankful my kids weren’t in the car.”Gerardo reported it to police and took to social media hoping someone could help. Four days later, Gilroy Police came through.An officer spotted the car on Leavesley Road and took off after it. It turned onto Luchessa Avenue where two people jumped out. The driver fled onto Highway 101 and drove off the road, through a fence on ranchland. Officers followed and the Suburban rammed a police car, injuring the officer when the airbag deployed.Police finally surrounded and arrested the suspect, a woman named Valeria Olmos, 22. They also grabbed the two who had jumped out, Izaak Diaz, 23, and an underage girl.They were charged with stealing the car, assault, resisting arrest and violation of probation.What followed was some good news and some bad. The car was totaled, but insurance would cover it.Corporal Lamont Toney found the purple and black wheelchair being towed behind a bicycle by a homeless man. The man told him he got the chair in a dumpster at a homeless camp by Alexander and Eighth streets. But, said Gerardo, it was so badly damaged it couldn’t be used. Searching Olmos’s home, police said they found the $5,000 communication device, but not Jocelyn’s glasses or her specially made $7,000 hearing aids, which were in her backpack.The wheelchair will take months to replace. They have improvised one that allows her to go to school at Blackford in San Jose, but Jocelyn is is in so much pain, she needs her wheelchair’s special padding and design to be able to function.“My daughter can’t sit up or speak,” said Gerardo, who works in San Jose as a mental health caseworker. Her husband is a concrete contractor. “She’s a really fragile child. Imagine you are stuck in a chair and you can’t get up and move around. It’s heartbreaking.”The computer Jocelyn uses with her feet to communicate was OK, but they broke the mount and arm so she can’t use it.“I can’t believe these people had no compassion. You would think they would have a little bit of humanity and see that the car had a wheelchair and toss it out without destroying it.”However, she found some humanity from the Gilroy Police Officers Association, which contributed $1,000 to help offset expenses. She thanked them Sunday, letting them meet her family at police headquarters.“This is why we do our job,” said Gilroy Sgt. Robert Locke-Padden. “To help people like this. We have to see so much and do so much. Sometimes we’re dealing with negative situations where people are getting arrested. It’s really heartwarming where we can do something and see something positive, get something back that was taken from them. It helps to fill your soul. That stuff is really important for police officers.”Gerardo said the officers really made a difference.“They went above and beyond and really worked their butts off. I think more people should give them credit.”