Yet another San Mateo County screw up. They need to get a County Manager that can actually manage

It certainly looks like the County is not getting its money's worth. One option they should look into is whether Theranos, whose system of lab analysis requires very little blood (50 microliters, a drop or two) and they have a very low cost analysis scheme for very many requirements. I wonder whether they would be amenable to set something up. If yes, then there would be no need for phlebotomist to draw blood, since a pin prick is all that is needed for their kit.EMR people could easily do that, since the procedure is very simple.

June 3, 2014
San Mateo County Sheriff’s Deputy Menh Trieu, who shot and killed 18 year old Yanira Serrano-Garcia at Moonridge Housing Half Moon Bay. He refused to give blood after the DA"s Office asked for it.

hmmm... the lowest bidder doesn't do very good work? Shocking.

Oh, yes, the "good kill," where somehow none of the three police officers had working cameras and the weapon that allegedly belonged to the thief/victim somehow didn't have a speck of his DNA on it. And now this. No surprise, since our police officers had already decided that the best evidence was no evidence.

No one is too concerned about this murder since the guy was obviously not a pillar of the community, or the fact that he was killed in a residential neighborhood in the middle of a day on a school holiday. Still, rather harsh punishment for petty theft.

Editor's note: DNA was found on the gun, but in insufficient quantity to reach the legal threshold for stating who deposited it. As with fingerprints, DNA is not automatically deposited on an object, unlike what you see on CSI. The "punishment" was not for petty theft. The DA concluded that the man had a gun and pointed it at officers.

your post is offensive. He was not a petty thief. He was sex offender who was wanted by parole. He was high on meth,
possession of stolen property, felon I. Possession of a gun. And tried to kill cops. He was a career criminal al who was a menace for his entire life. Editors feel free to delete my post when you delete this garbage from mystery.

[Post removed. Please make your point without negatively characterizing other posters. That just leads to posters going after each other instead of after the topic.]

When police start meting out justice in the streets instead of following the law, it's bad for all of us, law abiding or otherwise. In this case, there's no evidence that the thief had a gun or was doing anything other than trying to run from the police. Sixth amendment, anyone?

Editor's note: The DA concluded that the man did have a gun and pointed it at officers: Web Link

The point being made by Mysteries and Lessons Learned is that although the D.A. did conclude this shooting was justified, there is a subjective history of D.A. Steve Wagstaffe going easy on cops who step over the line. Recent history of this includes bringing very light charges on a sheriff's deputy who apparently pointed a loaded gun at a janitor in court and threatened to mete out some "South Carolina justice."

In this case, the peculiar circumstances under which all three cop cams were off, or not activated, the lack of DNA evidence on the alleged weapon brandished by the deceased, as well as the fiasco documented in this article about the blood sample work, certainly does not serve to provide objective evidence to confirm Wagstaffe's findings. If anything, the opposite.

In other words, there are reasonable bases to be suspicious over how all of this was handled. I don't believe anyone is disputing whether the officers were justified in shooting someone pointing a gun at them. The question is did this happen, and it's going to take more than Wagstaffe just saying so to convince at least me. It's suspicious.

thoughtful:

I suspect that even if there was film of the subject pointing a gun at officers, you and others like you would conclude the film was somehow manipulated. I sense an inherent distrust of law enforcement.

Nope, a film would do it for me. Saying one or two of the cameras weren't on, I could maybe understand. Saying all three cameras didn't work/weren't turned on, troubles me, but add to on top of that no DNA to establish he was holding the gun is where I say "wait a minute."