The Reckoning: How a violent arrest forced out two veteran Palo Alto cop
PART 1: THE DECISION
On Sept. 1, 2021, former Palo Alto Police Agent Thomas DeStefano received a letter from then-Police Chief Robert Jonsen informing him that he was being fired.
The action came more than two years after department began its probe into the conduct of DeStefano and other officers who were involved in the infamous Feb. 17, 2018, arrest of Gustavo Alvarez at the Buena Vista Mobile Home Park, a low-income neighborhood along El Camino Real tucked back behind a strip mall.
That arrest ultimately triggered an internal-affairs investigation, a civil lawsuit against the city and a criminal conviction of a police supervisor.
DeStefano was the second officer to arrive at Buena Vista that evening, after Officer Christopher Conde had followed Alvarez home. Once Alvarez got inside, he refused to come out when ordered to do so by Conde and other officers. A surveillance video that Alvarez’ attorney released about a year after the incident showed DeStefano pointing his gun down while the supervising officer, Sgt. Wayne Benitez, kicked down the door of Alvarez’ home.
Seconds later, after Alvarez was pulled out of the home and handcuffed, DeStefano stood by while Benitez slammed Alvarez on the hood of Alvarez’ car.
Palo Alto resident Gustavo Alvarez was illegally detained and assaulted by police on Feb. 17, 2018 near his dwelling at Buena Vista Mobile Home Park. Video footage from Gustavo Alvarez’s home surveillance system.
Jonsen wrote in his September 2021 letter to DeStefano that the officers’ actions justified the penalty of termination. He cited five department policies that DeStefano had violated during the arrest: duty to intercede, reporting the use of force, report corrections, non-criminal activity (which relates to a failure to document the pointed gun), and conduct unbecoming a member of the department.
Jonsen, who is now Santa Clara County sheriff, noted in the termination letter that DeStefano was laughing at the scene of the arrest. And later, DeStefano recounted what happened to Alvarez in a message to another officer, telling him that he “missed out” because “the Fuse was lit,” a reference to Benitez’ nickname. For emphasis, DeStefano reportedly reenacted Benitez’ use of force after the fact by slamming his hand on the hood of the car, Jonsen wrote.
“You failed to document your own use of force, failed to notify a supervisor of excessive force that you witnessed, and then approved reports you knew to be false,” Jonsen wrote. “Your conduct was unprofessional and has had an extremely negative impact on the public’s trust in the Department. You covered up an unjustified use of force that eventually came to light only because of Mr. Alvarez’s home surveillance system and his pursuit of legal claims against the City. For these reasons, termination is the appropriate penalty.”
While Palo Alto Online was the first to report in September 2021 that DeStefano is no longer with the Palo Alto Police Department, the city declined to say at that time whether his departure was voluntary. DeStefano himself did not immediately respond to a request for comments.
This is the first story in a three-part series. Read the full story here.
A Shelter Divided: Has Pets In Need lost its way?
Volunteer Barbara Maynard hugs a cat that’s up for adoption at the Palo Alto animal shelter on Aug. 7, 2023. Photo by Magali Gauthier
When Laura Toller Gardner stepped into her job as the new CEO of the Redwood City-based nonprofit in March, Pets In Need, there was no time for a honeymoon.
The contract between Pets In Need and the city of Palo Alto was about to expire, and despite the agency having announced in 2021 it would not renew their partnership due to the city’s alleged breach of their agreement, the nonprofit this spring was signing stop-gap extensions with the city while negotiating a long-term renewal.
Pets In Need’s finances had taken a sizable hit, for reasons that the organization attributes to the growing costs of labor and medical supplies and the roughly $500,000 that it has been spending annually to subsidize its Palo Alto operations, Toller Gardner said.
Relations between the organization’s Redwood City and Palo Alto branches were also at a low point, and several Pets In Need employees, including its medical director, programs director and human resources director, were on the way out, having been either forced out or fired for reasons that some of their colleagues felt were unjust.
Also, people were talking. Within her first few weeks on the job, Toller Gardner found herself responding to a social media post that accused Pets In Need — a “no kill” shelter — of becoming a “high-kill” shelter with a rising euthanasia rate.
Read the full story here.
Palo Alto Weekly nets 17 honors in California Journalism Awards
The staff of the Palo Alto Weekly and PaloAltoOnline.com has won 17 awards in the annual California Journalism Awards competition, which celebrates excellence in reporting, design, photography and multimedia by media organizations throughout the state.
Judged by in- and out-of-state journalists, the contest recognizes work published in 2022 by California journalists working for a range of news outlets, from campus publications to small, independently owned community newspapers to large corporate-run metropolitan dailies.
The Palo Alto news staff received first place accolades in the following divisions and categories:
Coverage of 2022 Elections (print division): "Anybody's game" by city hall reporter Gennady Sheyner
Investigative Reporting (digital division): "Fatal errors" by Sheyner
Land-Use Reporting (digital division): "Redefining downtowns" by Sheyner and Digital Editor Jamey Padojino
News Photo (print division): "We have to do something'" by Chief Visual Journalist Magali Gauthier
Coverage of Youth and Education (print division): "So long, early birds: To combat teens' sleep deprivation, California schools must start their days later" by staff writers Zoe Morgan, Leah Worthington and Angela Swartz
In addition to the first-place honors, Palo Alto Weekly staff also won the following awards:
In-Depth Reporting (print): Second place, "Battling bias" by Sheyner, Kevin Legnon, and Kristin Brown
Investigative Reporting (print): Second place, "Fatal errors" by Sheyner
Profile Story (print): Second place, "A principal's pledge: Barron Park's new principal aims to forge partnerships by making home visits to each student's family" by Morgan
Feature Story (print): Second place, "Live music rebounds from pandemic shutdown to foster renewed sense of community" by Editorial Assistant John Bricker and Editorial Intern Emily Margaretten
Arts & Entertainment Coverage (digital): Second place, "Holiday block party: Lego enthusiasts share passion for building" by Margaretten
Feature Photo (print): Second place, "A tender moment" by Gauthier
In-Depth Reporting (print): Third place, "Will new laws stop the thieves?" by Staff Writer Sue Dremann
Coverage of Youth and Education (print): Third place, "Making sure help is there: Palo Alto Unified launches new plan to boost mental health services" by Morgan
Feature Photo (print): Third place, "Ballet finds a home" by Gauthier
News Photo (print): Third place, "A historic strike" by Gauthier
Inside Page Layout & Design (print): Third place for "Battling bias', Design Manager Kristin Brown
Sheyner also garnered third place for investigative reporting in the highly competitive "Open Division," which pits first-place finishers in their individual circulation categories against all other winners.
Sheyner's "Fatal errors" took third place while competing with the Los Angeles Times. Wrote the judge: "The reporter's clear writing detailed not just this tragic incident but the broader safety issues facing Palo Alto utility workers. The story explains clearly what is known as well as the unexplained questions. The section at the end explaining what went into reporting this story was a great touch. Fabulous job."
Its future uncertain, La Comida scrambles to find new space downtown
La Comida clients sit down for lunch at Stevenson House in Palo Alto on April 19, 2023. Photo by Magali Gauthier.
Jan Holliday discovered La Comida more than two decades ago, when her daughter, son-in-law and two grandchildren moved into her Crescent Park home.
She didn't have full access to her kitchen at that time, and so she began to attend lunches that the nonprofit was providing at a Bryant Street building occupied by the nonprofit Avenidas. The program, she said, was a "lifesaver." She was able to obtain nutritious meals while meeting people in the community.
But after close to four decades in Avenidas, the dining program came to an acrimonious halt in 2017, when Avenidas began to rehabilitate the building and the newly reconfigured dining area was deemed by La Comida to be too small for its needs. In August of that year, La Comida left Avenidas.
The food fight between Palo Alto's two preeminent senior-serving nonprofits had by then turned bitter. La Comida users argued that Avenidas' proposed dining space, which would accommodate around 90 people rather than the pre-rehabilitation 120, amounted to an eviction for the dining program. The debate over space turned into a legal scuffle in 2016, when La Comida filed an appeal against Avenidas' rehabilitation plan. (The two sides ultimately reached a settlement that, among other conditions, committed Avenidas to help pay for a new location for La Comida.)
These days, Holliday and many other residents in north Palo Alto are settling for the next best scenario: picking up takeout meals that are prepared, packaged and distributed to dozens of seniors on weekdays at the First United Methodist Church on Hamilton Avenue. In south Palo Alto, La Comida continues to run a congregate dining program at the Stevenson House apartment complex, where it prepares all of its meals and serves about 150 visitors at about 70 tables on a typical afternoon, according to Bill Blodgett, co-president of the La Comida board.
The downtown takeout program is also a hit. On a typical lunch hour, it attracts about 140 seniors, according to Blodgett. Most are low income; a few are homeless. Many are residents of Lytton Gardens or other downtown senior residential facilities. By 11:45 a.m. on a recent Monday, about two dozen individuals had lined up to get lunches just as the program opened for the day.
Jan Holiday, a longtime participant in La Comida's lunch program and a member of the nonprofit's board of directors, stands outside the take-out location at the First United Methodist Church on April 17, 2023. Photo by Gennady Sheyner.
Holliday arrived a bit after noon to pick up La Comida's daily offering: pollo asado, pinto beans, green pepper strips, zucchini and fresh fruit. She exchanged pleasantries with passersby. A woman cheerfully greeted her. "Nice to see you," she replied, smiling back. The community interactions are still there in the takeout program, she said, but they're fleeting.
"The social connections that I made while having lunch at Avenidas are invaluable in my life," Holliday, 81, said. "From the bottom of my heart, they are invaluable. Losing that has been a great loss in my feeling of well-being."
The downtown program is now in jeopardy. Starting in July, La Comida will be required to return to congregate dining to remain eligible for the various state and federal grants that pay for its operations. The pandemic-era exemption that allowed the nonprofit to switch to takeout is about to go away thanks to the recent expiration of California's state of emergency.
Read the full story here.
After wild weather season, residents raise alarms about falling trees
Water in San Francisquito Creek floats out from under the Pope-Chaucer Bridge on Jan. 9, 2023. Photo by Magali Gauthier.
Leah Russin was sitting on her living room sofa, her 3-year-old daughter on her lap, on March 21 when a Douglas fir that towered over her backyard toppled over into her house, puncturing the roof, destroying an eave, crushing the side of her balcony and penetrating a crawl space just a few feet away from her.
She grabbed her daughter and ran out the front door and into the pouring rain.
"All I was thinking about is, 'How far do I need to run?' and 'How much of my house will collapse?'" Russin said.
Read the full story here.
Review: What hath Palo Alto Wrought?
Stanford University faced an unusual quandary in 1930, when students started complaining that their beds were too small to accommodate their growing frames.
According to a letter that students wrote to the editor of The Stanford Daily that year, at least 50 male students were over 6-feet, 2-inches tall and needed longer mattresses. The paper's staff followed suit with an editorial titled, "Give them Room."
Then, two decades later, it happened again, sparking the 1950 headline, "Towering freshmen overlap Encina beds," in the student publication. Stanford administrators examined students' height records and put in an emergency order for 7-foot beds.
The cover of "Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World," by Malcolm Harris. Courtesy Little, Brown and Company.
In Malcolm Harris' expansive, engaging and explosive new book, "Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World," the image of Stanford racing to accommodate its influx of big, friendly giants serves as an apt metaphor for — and a direct symptom of — what he calls the Palo Alto System. Pioneered by Leland Stanford and refined over the years by the likes of Lewis Terman, Herbert Hoover, William Shockley, Jr., Steve Jobs and Peter Thiel, the system breeds ruthless efficiency, economic inequality, white supremacy, labor abuse and unspeakable wealth for those at the top. His book, which will be released on Feb. 14, describes Palo Alto as "the belly of the capitalist beast."
Read the full review here.
Heavy storms, flood risks renew sense of urgency over delayed San Francisquito Creek projects
Xenia Hammer and her neighbors in Palo Alto's Crescent Park neighborhood watched with anxiety as water toppled over the banks of San Francisquito Creek on Saturday morning, submerging streets around the volatile creek and sparking emergency warnings from the city.
For Hammer, who lives near Eleanor Pardee Park, the sight was both rare and familiar. Though normally tame during drought years, the creek is known for creating devastation during storms as water from the foothills and Stanford University land races downstream toward U.S. Highway 101 and through residential neighborhoods in Palo Alto, Menlo Park and East Palo Alto. Residents scarcely need to be reminded of the February 1998 storm, which flooded 1,700 properties, required hundreds of people to evacuate, caused tens of millions of dollars in property damage, and submerged the highway.
"It's very scary and stressful to watch the creek levels creeping up," Hammer said. "I saw so many neighbors outside looking at floodwater and being very worried. It's been 25 years since the last flood and there is no excuse for being in that situation here."
For Hammer and other residents near the creek, the anxiety comes with a palpable sense of frustration. The Pope-Chaucer Bridge, which crosses the creek and connects Crescent Park and Menlo Park's Willows neighborhood, remains vulnerable to flooding despite two decades of discussions about the need to rebuild the 1940s structure with one that has greater water-flow capacity.
Read the full story here.
Special report: Battling biased policing
An analysis of every stop that Palo Alto police officers made during the first three months of this year indicates that the same types of racial disparities seen in other jurisdictions across California also exist locally: Black individuals were more likely than white individuals to experience intrusive actions like handcuffing and use of force; they underwent "consensual" searches more often; and they faced bigger odds of being stopped based on a "call for service," which is initiated by a suspicious resident or a dispatcher rather than by an officer.
Read the full story here.
Redefining downtowns: Peninsula cities bank on 1970s-era planning tool to transform their civic centers
Arroyo Green in Redwood City. Photo by Gennady Sheyner
There was a time, not too long ago, when gunshots and the drone of court hearings played like a soundtrack to Prince Wilson's life.
In 2011, his son Adam died after a shooting in an Oakland bar. Two years ago, his other son was shot in the leg. When the son's friend helped him to the car and the two drove away, a gunman shot and killed the friend at 98th Street and MacArthur Boulevard, Wilson said.
The personal tragedies and Oakland's climate of violence took their toll on Wilson, 65, and his family. He and his wife divorced after Adam's murder but got back together two years later. They split again after the more recent shooting.
A U.S. Army veteran who was born and raised in Oakland, Wilson needed to get away, but his options were limited. He moved to Modesto and found shelter in a complex for individuals with disabilities, where he spent six years before the place was shut down because of building code violations, he said in an interview. He crashed on couches, lived in his car and moved in with his brother for a month before finding shelter in San Jose through the nonprofit LifeMoves in early 2021. That helped, but it was, at best, a temporary solution.
His housing instability was compounded by health issues. Wilson, a custodian with the Oakland Unified School District, retired in 2006 after suffering a stroke that weakened the left side of his body. More recently, he had two throat surgeries and a heart surgery to replace five valves, he said.
But things turned around last May, when Wilson became one of the first tenants at Arroyo Green, a newly constructed 117-apartment complex in downtown Redwood City. Developed by the nonprofit MidPen Housing, Arroyo Green is part of a residential boom that has brought more than 4,000 new residential units to Redwood City since 2015.
Now Wilson, in addition to going to occupational therapy, physical therapy and volunteering at VA Palo Alto Healthcare Systems, has another routine: visiting the building's game room in the evening, putting on some Al Green and working on his pool shot. "I like to see if I still got it," Wilson recently told this news organization.
Read the full story here.
COVID brings uneven changes to Silicon Valley workplaces
Stanford nurses make calls for a fair contract during a rally in March 2022. Courtesy Nancy Fitzgerald/Committee for Recognition of Nursing Achievement.
When COVID-19 jolted Silicon Valley's famously disruptive work culture in March 2020, the shakeup was swift, dramatic and grossly uneven.
While tech workers bunkered down in their apartments for Zoom meetings, the benefits of remote work were not available to most of their counterpart in the "essential" categories.
Consider child care. In the early days of the pandemic, executives and board members at nonprofit Palo Alto Community Child Care scrambled to figure out how to safely and effectively provide child care services to the hundreds of families who depend on their services. The nonprofit employs about 100 care providers at 15 sites throughout the city and serves children who range in age from infancy to fifth grade.
"We've had to pivot so many times that it's hard for me to think of what we were before and what we are now," said Melissa Roth, the nonprofit's senior program coordinator.
Read more here.