San Jose Police Brutality Remains a Mystery
New America Media, News Feature//
, Words: Mark Schurmann//Video: Min Lee, Posted: May 31, 2007
Editor’s Note: Months after members of the Custodio family were violently restrained and tasered by San Jose police, the community still doesn’t know why the police made the arrests or chose to use force. Mark Schurmann is a writer with New America Media. Min Lee is an editor at YO! Youth Outlook Multimedia.
SAN JOSE — For the Custodio family, what started as a normal evening on Feb. 5, 2007 turned into a terrifying encounter with the police. Why it happened at all remains a mystery.
San Jose police declined to comment on the incident but Assistant District Attorney David Howe admitted that the Custodios have been charged with resisting arrest as well as possession of less than an ounce of marijuana (a misdemeanor offense) in the case of Marlo Custodio.
Family representatives say the Filipino-American family was subjected to a series of unprovoked attacks by members of the San Jose Police Department in the Evergreen Valley lake area of San Jose and were subsequently charged with
resisting arrest to cover up the use of excessive force.
Howe declined to comment on allegations of police brutality or what led to the initial reason for the arrest.
Supporters allege that during a routine traffic stop, Marlo Custodio, age 18, was dragged from his car and tackled by eight San Jose police officers while two others stood by and watched.
They say Custodio managed to place a call to his mother on his cell phone, asking for help, before being repeatedly tasered by officers.
When she arrived, Marilou Alvarado Custodio, age 50, accompanied by Marlo’s two brothers, was violently restrained, her head repeatedly slammed against the side of a police car. Though cooperative, Romel Custodio, 25, was subdued, tasered and kneed in the face. All three were then arrested and booked into San Jose county jail. Although present, O.J. Custodio, 16, was not arrested.
At a recent press conference held in front of the San Jose Superior Court, community activists and legal consultants joined with San Jose residents to call on police to drop the charges against the Custodio family who was scheduled for a pre-trial conference that afternoon.
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No one at the rally seemed to know why police arrested members of the family in the first place or what led them to use excessive force.
Richard G. Konda, executive director of the Asian Law Alliance and a legal consultant for the family, called the incident a case of extreme and excessive police force and demanded that the charges of resisting arrest be dropped. He was unsure of what led police to make the arrest.
“It’s a big question in my mind,” said Konda. “From my understanding, Marlo was sitting in his car minding his own business when someone from the neighborhood called the police, claiming suspicious activity. It’s still unclear why that snowballed into tasers being used and the mother being beaten and arrested.”
Rowena Tomaneng, an organizer for the Justice for Custodio Family Campaign, admits that the Evergreen area, where the incident took place and where the Custodios live, has recently seen an increase in robberies and the use of narcotics in public spaces, making many residents nervous.
However, Tomaneng added that these problems just feed into existing stereotypes that are already pervasive in the police department about young males of color. “Marlo was parked at the lake with his girlfriend when the police asked him to exit the car,” she said. “When he pointed to his shoes (still in the car) and asked if he could retrieve them, that’s when the police grabbed him by the neck and threw him to the ground.”
Tomaneng says that Marlo was tasered even though he was submissive and cooperated with the police.
Like Konda, she is unsure why the violence escalated with Marlo and with his mother and brother when they arrived on the scene. “The Custodios are upstanding citizens in the community,” said Tomaneng. “This kind of violence has just become institutionalized in the police department.”
Many who attended the rally saw the incident as part of a bigger problem of police violence in San Jose. Speakers cited the case of Cau Tran, a young Vietnamese woman shot to death by San Jose police in 2003 when her vegetable peeler was mistaken for a weapon. They also cited the case of Rudy Cardenas, a San Jose man shot in the back and killed by a state narcotics agent in 2004. Unarmed, Cardenas was mistaken by the agent for another man.
Both cases ended with officers cleared of any misconduct.
“Police brutality does not have a color, or a personality or even an age. It happens to Asians as well as blacks and Latinos,” said Mark Serrano, program director for the Filipino Youth Coalition. “It’s a power trip,” he added.
A friend of the Custodio family, Serrano says the sole purpose for the tight-knit family was to look out for each other. “That night, the police didn’t allow them to do that.”
For legal reasons, family members would not comment on details of the case, though friends say that the events of that night continue to haunt the family. Marilou Alvarado Custodio hasn’t been to work since the night of the incident and O.J. Custodio, an eyewitness, has trouble sleeping and has seen his school grades slip. All are suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and anxiety, friends say.
“It’s consuming us emotionally and mentally,” said Marilou Alvarado Custodio, who stood quietly by her sons and sister during last week’s press conference.
Brother-in-law David Gray agreed with other speakers that police accountability is needed in order to prevent similar incidents from happening again. Yet, like others, he was unsure why the police felt they needed to use force at all. “This should never have happened in the first place. This family isn’t guilty of anything,” said Gray.
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User Comments
tom draper on Jun 07, 2007 at 01:12:51 said:
same thing happing at my house, case is court pending.
-->evergree area not far from the lake.