Tales From the Newsroom: SWAT in suburbia
Reporting breaking news from the competition's facility
This Saturday, I’ll be attending the funeral of a former co-worker. Ion and I had actually met in college, both working for the campus newspaper — me a news and entertainment reporter, he a photographer.
A few years later, we were on staff again at the Chula Vista Star-News, a twice-weekly (Wednesdays and Saturdays) community paper in the suburbs between the Mexican border and San Diego proper.
This was in the late 1980s, and local police agencies had not yet switched their radios to digitized encryption — and so we would often still hear a breaking story in real time on our police scanners in the newsroom.
One slow afternoon, the scanner came to life with all kinds of frantic calls, and above it all we kept hearing “SWAT.” Someone finally made out an address, and Butch, the managing editor (hey — I don’t name them, I’m just reporting what happened), looked around the newsroom, saw Ion and me, and told us to get over there and get some photos and a story.
The standoff was in an industrial park south of town, down in the Otay section. Chula Vista Police had the whole area cordoned off. I found the temporary crime scene HQ, greeted the officer in charge (whom I already knew, and who knew me), and asked what was going on.
“Standoff. Some guy is holding his dog hostage with a big knife.”
That was deflating. The big metro papers in town, the San Diego Union and the Evening Tribune, regularly got real news stories for their reporters to sink their teeth into. Here I am with a SWAT standoff ... and the hostage is the guy’s own pooch?
Nobody had any additional information on what had set the guy off, if anyone else was trapped, nothing. Police negotiators were attempting to contact the suspect, who was holed up in a warehouse at the far end of the industrial park. So there was nothing to do but sit and wait.
I found a pay phone, called the office, and gave what little update I had. As I wrote earlier, it was a slow news day, and I think this was a day ahead of our next issue, so Butch said, “Get anything you can — this is leading A1." (The front page.)
Ion being Ion (meaning Ion, being a great news photographer) was trying to get a shot of something other than a bunch of people standing behind yellow police tape or bored cops sitting in their SWAT van.
I decided to walk the police perimeter to see what, if anything, I could without ticking off the cops (who often fed me good tips, because the reporters for the two San Diego dailies tended to be kind of arrogant). After a half mile or so, I noticed that the San Diego Union and Tribune had a shared distribution center in one of the cordoned-off warehouses — but the entrance to the warehouse was on this side of the yellow tape.
I circled back, found Ion, and quietly told him, “Follow me.”
Ion and I went back to the competition’s circulation warehouse where the local news carriers would come to pick up their papers for delivery each day, and walked right in as if we belonged.
It being late afternoon, and the Tribune already having been delivered for the day, the two or three folks still on duty were all in the back looking out a roll-up garage door across the parking lot to where the police negotiator was trying to make contact with the suspect.
One of the circulation guys saw us, and came over. “Hey — you the reporter I called the office about?”
“Yeah, man, thanks for the tip!” I nodded at Ion, and he went over to the open door and began shooting off nice, close-up photos. I chatted with the Union & Tribune circulation rep, asked what time the cops had shown up, did they know the suspect, had they seen anything out of the ordinary?
He told me what he knew, and explained that since there were no guns involved, the police had told him that he and his staff could continue working so long as they stayed out of the way.
The guy even brewed up a pot of coffee for us, and offered me a chair.
Unfortunately, after about 45 minutes, one of the police sergeants swung through to check on the circulation guys and make sure everything was okay ... and saw me. Whom he knew from my hanging around the Police Department all the time looking through crime logs for news tips. And whom he knew damn sure wasn’t a police reporter for the Union or Tribune. (I actually was a stringer for the Tribune’s entertainment desk — with the Star-News barring me from covering any events in their circulation area; I’d had the part-time Evening Trib gig first, and negotiated that detail when I was hired at the Star-News.)
The cop headed straight for me. “I told you to stay behind the tape with everyone else!” He ordered Ion and me to follow him, and as we were leaving he turned to the Union and Tribune circulation manager and said, “Why would you let a Star-News reporter and photographer into your warehouse anyway?” The guy didn’t took too happy.
Ion assured me that he had plenty of good shots for the story. When we got back to the police perimeter, I immediately spotted reporters from both the Union and Tribune, safely behind the yellow tape.
“Where were you guys?” they asked me suspiciously.
“Nowhere,” I lied.
A few hours later, the suspect surrendered, the dog was fine — and our article had much better photos than either of the two big city dailies.
But I always kind of wondered if their editors didn’t notice that Ion’s photos were taken from inside their warehouse?
-30-
lol. Good story.