The attorney for Pete Joseph Valdez III, the man accused of
trying to shoot a Gilroy police officer in the face, told a judge
today that he still awaits potential video footage from Gilroy
police.
The attorney for Pete Joseph Valdez III, the man accused of trying to shoot a Gilroy police officer in the face, told a judge today that he still awaits potential video footage from Gilroy police.
Sporting a thicker, bushier beard since his last court appearance about a month ago, Valdez briefly appeared at the Santa Clara County Superior Courthouse in San Martin today before Commissioner Gregory Saldivar, who acted as judge and agreed to give both sides until 1:30 p.m., Sept. 30, to find any missing video evidence. This is the latest delay since December 2007, when Valdez’s attorney, Berndt Ingo Brauer, began asking the prosecution and the Gilroy Police Department about what cameras in police cruisers may or may not have been rolling that November morning.
Four cars responded to the Nov. 15 incident, when officer John Ballard noticed Valdez, 29, bicycling about 3 a.m. without a headlight. When Ballard tried to stop him, Valdez took off. Ballard caught up with Valdez a few blocks later, and a foot chase ensued, police said. Valdez ultimately pointed a .25-caliber semiautomatic handgun loaded with seven hollow-point bullets at point blank range at Ballard’s face before pulling the trigger repeatedly, police said.
The gun misfired, but Ballard’s car did not have a camera inside to capture the event anyway, according to Sgt. Jim Gillio. Two of the cars that followed did have cameras, but they were not working correctly or were not being used at all, according to the city’s IT Director, David Chulick. The fourth responding car did not have a camera. The police department is in the process of replacing the old, faulty equipment.
All this means video evidence probably does not exist, according to Gillio. Even if one of the two cameras were rolling, police have said the incident likely took place out of frame or either before or after the other cars arrived.
But Brauer is not willing to risk anything.
“We’re still looking into the servers for videos,” he told Judge Saldivar Tuesday.
This takes time, though, because when the city’s IT department moved the physical video databases from the old police department to the new one sometime between Nov. 12 and Dec. 7, an employee removed some of the heavy disk drives from their shelving units to make their transportation easier. That person did so without noting their specific order, which is vital because reinserting the drives out of order corrupts the data. The city has spent about $7,000 to identify the correct order, and since late July, Chulick has been looking for any Valdez footage. Chulick was out of town Tuesday and could not be reached for comment.
The IT team’s entire search stems partly from Superior Court Judge Hector E. Ramon’s order last May for GPD to preserve all electronic information. Among a laundry list of requests before the preliminary hearing takes place, Brauer has also included the operation and maintenance histories of the department’s cameras, permission to inspect the relevant vehicles and the hard drive that stored any potential videos along with the upkeep log for the storage device.
Valdez faces felony charges of attempted murder of a police officer, assault of a police officer with a firearm, being a felon in possession of a gun, and delaying or resisting a police officer. If convicted of these charges Valdez, who has been denied bail, would spend the rest of his life in prison.
In an interview with police after the incident, Valdez said he pulled the gun in hopes that an officer would shoot and kill him.
“I don’t want to live,” said a crying Valdez after he was apprehended, according to court records.
Valdez – the son of former 16-year Gilroy councilman Pete Valdez Jr. – has 10 prior convictions including three felony convictions for a strong-arm robbery.
