Flowers and candles were left at the San Diego Police Department memorial to officers who died in the line of duty the morning after an officer-involved shooting left one officer dead and one wounded. San Diego Police Chief Shelley Zimmerman held a press conference Friday, July 29, 2016, to update the media on the death of police officer Jonathan DeGuzman and the condition of injured police officer Irwin Wade who were both shot Thursday night. (John Gastaldo/The San Diego Union-Tribune via AP) syndication.ap.org
SAN DIEGO (AP) Investigators viewed body-camera footage to learn how one San Diego police officer was killed and another seriously injured in a gunbattle during a traffic stop. But the city"s police chief said Saturday that she has yet to determine if the shooting was similar to targeted, premeditated attacks on police in other parts of the country.
Chief Shelley Zimmerman and Mayor Kevin Faulconer visited briefly with the wounded officer, 32-year-old Wade Irwin, at the hospital on Saturday morning, but investigators were still unable to interview him after surgery. Zimmerman reiterated that Irwin was expected to fully recover, and Faulconer said the nine-year veteran of the force "looked good, all things considered."
Zimmerman didn"t say what the police body camera footage showed and declined to comment on other aspects of the investigation, saying lots of ballistics, forensics and other evidence had to be processed. She stopped short of tying the shooting to killings of officers this month in Dallas and Baton Rouge, Louisiana, which have put police departments on high alert across the country.
"Until more information becomes available, we"re not going to tie it to anything else," Zimmerman said at a news conference at UC San Diego Medical Center, where Irwin is recovering. "I want to be clear. We"re not making any correlation. We just don"t know yet."
The officers, members of an anti-gang unit, were uniformed, wore bulletproof vests and drove a marked car. Zimmerman said Saturday that it was still unclear if they stopped for pedestrians or motorists in the blue-collar neighborhood of southeastern San Diego.
The mayor and police chief also visited Saturday with the wife and two children of Jonathan DeGuzman, 43, the officer who died in Thursday night"s shooting after surviving a stabbing 13 years earlier while on duty. The 16-year veteran of the force had been stabbed in the right arm in 2003 after pulling over a driver for speeding, and he shot the aggressor in the hip after the man tried to stab him again.
Zimmerman, who worked with DeGuzman before she was elevated to chief in 2014, said she informed DeGuzman"s wife 13 years ago that he survived the stabbing. DeGuzman received the department"s purple heart for valor in that traffic stop.
"I was able to at that time tell his wife that he was going to be OK and, as I was driving over there that night, I knew I was going to have to make the notification that he was not going to be OK, he was not coming home, and nothing prepares you for that," Zimmerman said.
Jesse Gomez, 52, was arrested on suspicion of murder and attempted murder after he was found in a ravine almost immediately after the shooting, suffering from a wound to the chest. He is expected to survive.
Police have given no further information about Gomez or a man they describe as a second "potential suspect," Marcus Cassani, who was arrested Friday on an unrelated warrant after a massive search that included SWAT officers swarming around two San Diego houses. Police have yet to definitively link Cassani, 41, to Thursday"s shooting, Zimmerman said Saturday.
An Anaheim, California, man who identified himself as Cassani"s father on Saturday handed the phone to his daughter, who said it was ongoing investigation and that the family had nothing more to say. She didn"t identify herself further and hung up.
Republican nominee Donald Trump is responding to the shooting of two police officers in San Diego, California, where at least one officer was killed late Thursday night, saying police shootings across the country are only getting worse.
Trumps campaign chairman Paul Manafort also reacted to the San Diego shooting during an appearance on Fox Newss Fox & Friends.
Whats going on in America is a result of seven and a half years of failed leadership and too often making the police and law enforcement agencies into the bad guys. Theyre not the bad guys, Manafort declared on Friday morning.Now everybody has got the right message including the administration, but until theres strong leadership leadership that gives direction to the country youre going to continue to have this kind of lawlessness, unfortunately.
Around 11 p.m. PST onThursday night, two police officers were conducting a routine traffic stop in San Diego, California whenthey were shot, according to NBC. One has died and the other is expected to survive. Authorities have detained one suspect and are searching for others.
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A San Diego police officer was fatally shot and another was wounded at a traffic stop late on Thursday, police said on Friday, and a suspect was taken into custody.
The officers, members of the department"s gang suppression unit, were shot during the traffic stop at about 11 p.m. local time in Southcrest, a neighborhood in southeast San Diego, The San Diego Union-Tribune reported. The officers were taken to hospitals.
"It is with a very sad heart that we announce the death of one of our officers tonight," the department said on Friday on its Twitter feed.
The second officer underwent surgery and is expected to survive, the department said.
The police department said it was searching for suspects in addition to the one in custody.
The incident comes amid a national debate on policing and minorities. Eight officers were shot dead in ambushes in Dallas and Baton Rouge in July, putting police departments across the United States on high alert. The deaths of black people at the hands of police also have triggered protests in the past two years.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, who has vowed to be tough on crime, commented on the San Diego shooting via Twitter, saying, "It is only getting worse. People want LAW AND ORDER!"
Zack Ryder shows off his San Diego Comic-Con toy haul
PHOTO ABOVE: Sharon Grant, pharmacist at Hillcrest Pharmacy, said preventive approaches to dealing with HIV -- including use of the drug Truvada -- will likely increase dialogue between doctors and people infected or at higher risk of becoming infected with the virus.
San Diego County is among a growing number of communities nationwide to begin championing a goal that would have seemed downright audacious a few years ago: driving HIV infection rates to zero -- or as close to it as possible.
Public-health experts said similar programs already underway in San Francisco, New York and Washington, D.C., show that big drops in new HIV cases are difficult but possible. They"re cautiously optimistic about getting targeted people to consistently take prescribed drugs and practice safer s*x two behaviors that have persisted despite decades of other outreach efforts.
Taking the San Diego region from nearly 500 new HIV infections per year down to almost zero will rely partly on the meticulous use of antiretroviral medications. Research shows that daily use of these drugs, particularly Truvada, massively lowers transmission rates of the human immunodeficiency virus and boosts resistance to infection by more than 90 percent.
But Truvada can cause serious side effects such as kidney damage and loss of bone density in a small percentage of patients. And critics of Truvada-based prevention programs contend that they could lull people into more careless sexual practices.
Truvada, a drug made by Gilead Sciences, can dramatically reduce transmission of HIV. / courtesy photo AP
Truvada, a drug made by Gilead Sciences, can dramatically reduce transmission of HIV. / courtesy photo / AP
For the Getting to Zero plan passed last week by the San Diego County Board of Supervisors to work, it will also take extensive coordination, said nationally known AIDS activist Peter Staley.
He said there must be strong connections between public-health departments, medical providers and the outreach organizations that serve communities facing the highest risk of HIV infection.
The only way these things work is when you get these massive coalitions. You get everybody sitting down regularly looking at the data. Its using science and adding a little elbow grease, Staley said.
San Diego appears to have built that kind of coalition. The special task force that put together the countys plan includes not just public health officials, but also representatives from the medical community and advocacy groups.
Patrick Loose, chief of the countys branch dealing with HIV, hepatitis and sexually transmitted diseases, said he believes that the programs ambitious aim is truly achievable, though the timetable for success has not been determined.
There has to be a community engagement and effort around this, and there have to be a lot of partners who come together to forward this message, but today were living in a world where the CDC describes HIV as a winnable battle. Thats a very amazing thing, Loose said.
Victory isn"t likely, Staley said, without additional resources. He said New York has invested about $20 million in additional resources for housing, nutrition and transportation services necessary to solve some of the social challenges that keep some from staying enrolled in treatment regimens.
San Diego County has not identified funding sources to bolster its HIV-prevention efforts, but officials said they will do so in the future.
New drug, old stigma
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2012 approved Truvada, a new application of existing antiretroviral medications used to manage HIV infections from becoming AIDS.
In San Diego County and elsewhere, the Truvada-based strategy seems simple: Keep treating all infected patients while having everyone who is at elevated risk of infection take a daily preventive dose. If both actions can be done consistently for a few years, HIV could be vanquished.
Experts said pulling off the "zero" feat will not be nearly as easy as it sounds.
The county Health and Human Services Agency said there about 20,000 HIV-positive people in the region, along with an estimated 2,300 who do not know they are infected and 6,400 who have tested positive but are not in treatment.
Many AIDS activists said today"s overriding culture in gay communities is to lessen your risk of infection by steering clear of people who admit they are HIV-positive. This in turn creates social pressure against disclosure of an HIV diagnosis and makes many people reluctant to get tested regularly.
San Diego county"s new program calls for not only Truvada prescriptions, but also outreach to the affected demographic groups and increased HIV testing.
Most insurance companies and Medi-Cal cover Truvada prescriptions, and the drug"s maker, Gilead Pharmeceuticals, offers financial help to people who are uninsured or have trouble meeting their copays.
High-risk groups include gay, bisexual and straight men and women who have multiple sexual partners; intravenous drug users; and men who have s*x with other men but identify themselves as straight.
Quick work
Loose, the county health official, believes progress can be made by working with health providers to make HIV testing an automatic step in patient care and by appealing to people"s noblest instincts.
If you are someone who is afraid of the stigma, were going to make it so that you dont have to seek out HIV testing. Its just going to be offered to you, Loose said. We think the message needs to be that we all have a role in ending the HIV epidemic.
The first wave of cities that launched similar programs have seen substantial results, even none of their rates have come close to zero, said the prominent AIDS activist Staley.
D.C. probably preceded everyone else, and they started ramping up their testing programs in 2006. They have seen close to a 50 percent drop in annual HIV diagnosis rates. San Francisco has seen a 30 percent drop in the last two years alone, Staley said.
He said the most impressive results seem to come in places where public-health departments work very closely with local advocacy groups. A seamless connection between HIV testing and treatment is critical, he said.
You ramp up testing to find those who dont know theyre positive and you have these hand-holding programs to get them treatment right away," Staley added. "Now its pretty standard in San Francisco that youre put on antiretrovirals the very same day (of diagnosis). Within weeks, you have no detectable viral load and are therefore un-infectious.
Not controversy-free
Its a far cry from how the AIDS epidemic started.
In 1981, rare lung infections detected in otherwise healthy, young gay men living in Los Angeles led to evidence of severe immune-system deficiency an effect also quickly linked to intravenous drug users.
By 1984, there were 7,699 AIDS cases and 3,665 deaths in the United States.
The world reported 4.7 million cases in 1995. And by 1999, 14 million people had died from the disease.
Antiretroviral drugs have turned HIV infection from a death sentence to a chronic, largely manageable condition. San Diego County recorded 475 new cases in 2015, a nearly 90 percent decline from the peak caseload seen in 1984.
Epidemiologists believe Truvada can help them minimize new HIV infections, but they have faced opposition from the Los Angeles-based AIDS Healthcare Foundation. The organization"s position is that using HIV drugs for prophylaxis rather than treatment could increase the rates of other sexually transmitted diseases.
In an open letter to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the foundation said the rapid rise in rates of STDs such as syphilis, chlamydia and gonorrhea indicate that fewer people are using condoms and suggesting the need to reinvigorate safer-s*x campaigns. The group asserts that such campaigns have received less attention as the CDC focuses on Truvada.
Loose and Staley said while the foundation is one of the most powerful advocacy groups in the nation, its stance against Truvada does not enjoy broad support in the community of gay and HIV support groups.
They said STD rates started increasing long before the FDA approved Truvada in 2012. They also said large studies of Truvada have not found an increase in STDs.
