Story ‘Sensational’

Your Jan. 26 article titled “Latino Family Charges Police With Brutality” is a travesty of journalism.

Rather, the 2,500 words you published were distorted, emotion-laden and presented few facts. Yellow journalism at its best. At the end you quote a female neighbor who says she’d “be afraid to call the police now. I’m afraid they’d come here and kill me.” I pray she will not hold to that belief in the middle of the night when she hears a prowler at her windows. By printing 2,500 words of sensational subject matter, you cultivate and promote anger and fear in San Diego readers.

The Catholic Church and the Center for Law and Justice have demanded an investigation. When the investigation is completed and summation made, print it. Your pictures of the bruises on the Pena family do not distract my mind. Resisting arrest and assaulting an officer are misdemeanors. And when drunk drivers kill, that’s forever.

Sagon Penn’s dilemma was far unlike that faced by the Pena family when the drunk son was being arrested. Mr. Roberto Martinez’s (of Coalition for Law and Justice) comparison is disturbing. It is a dishonor to the standards and rules that call for hearing each and every case on its own individual merits.

Cops are people who give their personal lives during work hours so you and I can live safely. Dispassionate queries, not prejudiced beliefs, will help the democratic process to evolve better for the good of all of us. Do your part.

M.C. COLLINS

San Diego

The Police Department reported this week that its investigation of the incident involving the Pena family found that excessive force had been used by at least one officer in the arrest of Francisco Pena. The department said the investigation into other aspects of the arrests will continue. --EDITOR.