Press Banner

Following is the e-mail message from Daryl Tempesta to Police Chief John Weiss in its original form, unedited:

Dear  Chief John P. Weiss

My Name is Daryl Tempesta,

I am speaking for myself. For the sake of disclosure I am a Director at Heritage Parks  HOA (Monti Fiori)

I used to live just down the street on Civic Center Drive at Woodhill VIllage. One evening, I had my video camera next to me inside my home home office, I hear squealing tires and yelling. A large group of officers stopped a drunk driver. The suspect was standing in the front of his car with both hands up, it was at night but the lights of his car and the others made him very illuminated. There was some yelling and a police approached him and without resistance from the suspect, clubbed him hard with a ton fa stick in the back of the leg, in what was questionable and probably unnecessary violence.

These is not just my observation..

Your Police department thought it necessary to conduct it's own internal investigation on the matter of unessesary use of violence on this suspect. I know because I was one of the participants interviewd about the matter  by a police officer a few days later at my doorstep, directly in front of where this occurred. At he time I was conflicted about the event and will be written in the report as saying I did not believe at the time that unreasonable force had been used, Actually I was kind scared at having witnessed first hand the brutality used by a defenseless drunk guy not resisting, standing there with hands above his head, lead me to respond that way. I am no longer afraid. I'm sure if others saw what I saw they would draw their own conclusions.

I believe that the family he belonged to lived in the low income affordable housing down the street. This crime is an unintended consequence fo the projects decision. And it's happening again with Target, good intentions - bad outcomes.

Today I am committed to making Scotts Valley the best place to live as possible. I was at the recent couple of City Counsel meetings and congratulate you on the success of your department and the new capital improvements - I like living in as secure and beautiful town. The mood of the citizens is beginning tested with the City Counsel allowing the Target Application to go forward in the face of the recent report which was illegally held according to the laws of the Brown Act. Until Paul Back and Frank the Monti Fiori president, hired their own lawyer to point this out. They will be asking the city prosecutor to investigate these charges in short order.

I am illustrating that this is getting ugly and will get uglier as the coming elections get closer - there all kinds of motives developing for illegal activity to occur. This will be even more true when if The proposed Target is built - it means a loss of your resources and even your personnel. I ask that you investigate using your access to Targets corporate Forensic Laboratories and see the prevalence of felonies and deaths of officers from criminal activities at the store and/or related crime of opportunity locations. Even the loss of one person from this or traffic accidents created by backlog 17 is unacceptable and a tragedy waiting to happen.

I have also seen former Mayor Bustichi pose with the heads of the departments in the slide show at the city counsel meeting. I understand the counsel is the "boss" so to speak but you should know that the RLDPAC.com which has been formed is organized and growing with members across the city. The seats in the new election will be hotly contested and there s a pretty good chance that there will be a board which seeks to curb the current trend of development at the expense of it's citizens and public defends like yourself which receive the brunt of the impact.

News outlets will no doubt follow this closely and I will be continuing to organize members of the community for responsible development in Scotts Valley.

I am asking you to please object this project in when formally asked.
If this is not possible I ask that you please not cooperate with the city counsel in pushing the Target project here. I cannot see how it could be in your departments interest.

It is a shame that Target will have succeeded in either sacrificing our standard of living  with pollution, traffic and crime it attracts of replacement of the civil servants who have served the community for years. Right now it;s the council sin so to speak so they will have the fallout. I hope they are the only  ones which will be impacted. I hope that we can keep all crime down including drunk drivers.

Respectfully Yours.
Daryl Tempesta