One of the challenges of breaking news is that both readers and news organizations want to see information on the web right after it happens, which is that's exactly when everyone is trying to figure out what occured.

When the news is big, the first step is sometimes easier, because it doesn't take much deliberation.

If a plane crashes or someone is killed, for example, I know I'm usually going to put whatever information I can immediately confirm up on the web and head to the scene.

But the calculation is often more complicated.

For example:

I heard about 7:30 this morning that police and firefighters were called to a "vehicle versus pedestrian" accident near Ramona Elementary School in Oxnard, I made calls to the fire and police departments.

I was able to confirm that at two minors had been hit and taken to a hospital, but it wasn't immediately clear how seriously they were hurt.

So here are some of my considerations:

Do I put the confirmed information immediately up on the web, and leave readers wondering if the injuries are bumps and bruises or life-threatening wounds?

Do I wait for more information, and risk missing witnesses at the scene if it was serious?

Do I head to the scene, risking a lot of wasted time if the crash turns out to be nothing?

Since I hear about vehicle versus pedestrian crashes just about every day, and they are usually nothing, I decided to wait.

In doing so, I had another conundrum to deal with:

My contacts at the Oxnard Fire Department and Oxnard Police Department kindly offered to call me back and send out a press release respectively when they knew more, but as each additional minute ticked by, I knew that if the accident was serious, my chances of getting to the scene early were diminishing.

On the other hand, if I called my contacts every five minutes every time a pedestrian was hit by a car, that would be pretty inefficient. (And they wouldn't be very happy with me, since they of course have other jobs to do.)

After picking time intervals to check back with them, I learned about 8:15 that one girl had only a minor injury.

I breathed a sigh of relief, and put a short brief on the web.

About 15 minutes later, we got a press release with more information, and I updated the brief on the Internet.

Stay tuned here at The Backstory for more breathtakingly exciting episodes from the breaking news cycle.

And, more importantly, be safe out there.

The killing of a mother and her teenage son in Oxnard Sept. 12 brought the total number of homicides in the county this year to 20, one more than in all of 2007.

In 2007, the Ventura County Medical Examiner's office counted 19 homicides, the lowest number since the office began keeping track in 1974.

The office defines a homicide as one person's death at the hands of another.

Here are the numbers of homicides in each Ventura County city so far this year:

Simi Valley - 3
Oxnard - 9
Port Hueneme - 2
El Rio - 1
Newbury Park - 1
Moorpark - 1
Camarillo - 2
Thousand Oaks - 1

These numbers come from our Crime Map, which we update as homicides occur. The number has not been cross checked with the Medical Examiner's office.

Related links:

Ventura County's homicide rate at record low in 2007

Homicide Map

Just because something is a big deal to someone doesn't mean it's always a big news story.

This may seem odd, even unfair, but it makes sense once you've reported for a while.

Everyone has stories that are immensely important to them, and often those stories are interesting, but there simply isn't space or time to cover all of them.

As I write this, the CHP is listing one traffic accident, for example. I'm sure that accident was a big deal to the people involved.

Generally, we only cover traffic accidents when someone is seriously injured or killed, or if it causes a really serious traffic jam.

I get calls frequently from people who ask me why the horrible accident they saw wasn't in the paper, and that's usually why: (thankfully) the crash didn't make the cut. I don't blame them. I would probably call myself, if I was in their place.

It's good to hear from readers because I'm often sitting in the office, and tips help me stay on top of the news.

But I digress.

Before I got distracted, I started writing this blog entry as an excuse to share this picture with you:

 

This photo, courtesy of the Ventura City Fire Department, shows firefighters putting out a fire that destroyed a motor home in Ventura on Wednesday.

As you can see, the fire was pretty dramatic. It totally destroyed the motor home, which was worth an estimated $30,000.

And it was a primary home for its owners, fire officials said in a statement.

That seems like a big deal to me, but it was only a brief in the paper. There was simply too much going on in the past week to look into it more.

In fact, with the tragic Metrolink crash, even a quintuple fatal crash near Fillmore got very limited attention.

There was an officer-involved shooting in Ventura yesterday, so I thought this would be an opportune time to take a moment to discuss this kind of incident.

Like many of the things I write about as a police reporter, officer-involved shootings are very different than they are often portrayed in much of television and cinema.

In the almost two years I have covered cops and breaking news in Ventura County, I have reported on several of these incidents.

I think the phrase "officer-involved shooting" says some important things on its own.

Law enforcement, like many specialties, frequently uses its own vocabulary, but this phrase is hard to get around. It is used to describe any incident where an officer fires a weapon, and as such it is accurate but a little non-specific.

Think about possible alternatives:

If an incident was called an officer shooting, it would imply that an officer had been shot. If it was called a shooting by an officer, it might imply that the officer was at fault.

The phrase, officer-involved shooting, on the other hand, makes it clear that an officer was involved in a shooting incident, but stays distant from anything that could be perceived as a factual statement or judgment about who was at fault or why the officer decided he or she had to shoot.

This all points to the seriousness with which these incidents are handled.

Unlike movies or television shows where officers often run around with guns blazing, in the real world it's a big deal whenever an officer uses potentially deadly force.

When such a shooting happens, the department whose officer was involved typically keeps information very close to their vest.

For example, in the two fatal officer-involved shootings I covered, departments waited days before releasing the name of the officer.

The names were released more quickly in the two officer-involved shootings involving the Ventura Police Department this year. The suspect who was shot survived in both of those shootings.

This time, the department also released a picture of the knife the suspect allegedly had in his possession when he confronted the officer. I didn't expect to get something like this, frankly.

Here it is:


It should be no surprise that police departments carefully calculate their responses to these incidents.

In both fatal officer-involved shootings I covered, relatives of those killed filled wrongful death lawsuits.

In addition, the District Attorney's Office investigates each use of deadly force.

To deem a shooting justified, the DA's office has to determine that "a reasonable person in the same circumstances" would believe him or herself (or someone else) was in danger of death or great bodily injury, Chief Assistant Ventura County District Attorney Jim Ellison told me.

If the DA's office decides a shooting was unjustified, prosecutors can pursue a criminal charge.

When someone is killed, the DA's office usually produces a public report on the incident.

These reports can take a very long time. Several reports came out this year about fatal officer-involved shootings that occurred in 2006.

When the person shot is facing a criminal prosecution, the office doesn't produce a report, Ellison said.

The rationale is that the information will come out in trial, and the DA's office doesn't want to interfere in a prosecution, Ellison said.

That means that unless something drastic changes, there won't be a public report from the DA's office on yesterday's officer-involved shooting.

Here are some of our recent stories involving officer-involved shootings:

Ventura officer shoots teen after police car rammed

Two officers cleared in fatal shooting

Deputy ruled justified in shooting of man

Mother files claim in son's shooting death

Officer who killed suspect is identified

Details emerge in shooting of former Seabee

Oxnard police on hunt for suspect linked to businessman's killing

And while I was looking up officer-involved shootings, I found this interesting study on the National Institute of Justice Web site about police responses to shootings:

National Institute of Justice

It was several hours after the accident, and medical examiners had already taken away the victim's body, but some gruesome evidence remained.

Behind the spot where the pedestrian came to rest after a driver hit him, his hat, a pair of headphones and one of his shoes sat on the roadway.

It was Sept. 3, and a few hours earlier, Eulogio Garcia Sanchez, 53, of Oxnard had been wearing them as he crossed the C Street at Elm Street in the pre-dawn dark, heading for a bus to go have coffee with friends.

When I zoomed in with my video camera, I could see the black hat had the word "cobra" written on it, and the black tennis shoe still had its laces tied. There was nothing gruesome about the items on their own, but there on the pavement, they were stark reminders of what cars can do to a human body.

Sanchez was by no means the first pedestrian knocked literally out of his shoes when a car hit him.

I can recall several recent accidents in Ventura County in which the same thing happened.

When Karey Marsh, 46, of Thousand Oaks,  was hit by an allegedly drunken driver while she was jogging near the edge of Oak Park last month, the impact threw her an estimated 30 feet into nearby shrubs but left her shoes behind, authorities said. In fact, emergency responders only knew a pedestrian had been hit because of those shoes.

And when an intoxicated driver slammed into an SUV on the side of the road and Officer Tony Pedeferri of the California Highway Patrol in December 2007, the impact launched Pedeferri 20 yards and threw him out of his boots. (The crash killed the driver of the SUV, who Pedeferri had pulled over.)

I first heard of someone being knocked out of his shoes when I was reporting on the crash that injured Officer Pedeferri.

When I first heard the detail, I thought to myself: I didn't know that could happen.

It seemed improbable, physically possible -- of course, objects at rest are inclined to stay at rest and all -- but incredible. Imagine the force necessary to throw a person so hard that a garment fastened to his or her body is pulled off by the impact alone.

It's something I would need a much better understanding physics than I have to really comprehend.

I asked a police contact and another from the medical examiner's office: Is this common? Neither common nor uncommon, they told me. It depends on a lot of things, but it does happen.

Most of us drive every day, some of us for hours, but how often do we consider that our cars are metal boxes weighing thousands of pounds, hurtling down the street at speeds that are mind boggling, especially when you compare it to the pedestrians, cyclists and others with whom we share the road.

Stay safe out there.

Here are links to some of of our articles and videos that relate to this topic:

http://www.venturacountystar.com/news/2008/sep/04/pedestrian-crossing-street-is-hit-and-killed/

http://www.venturacountystar.com/news/2008/aug/27/to-jogger-struck-by-vehicle-killed/

http://gallery.venturacountystar.com/video.cfm?VideoID=556

http://gallery.venturacountystar.com/video.cfm?VideoID=188

http://gallery.venturacountystar.com/video.cfm?VideoID=563

http://www.venturacountystar.com/news/2007/dec/21/chp-officer-remains-in-critical-condition/

http://www.venturacountystar.com/news/2008/jul/03/injured-chp-officer-home-after-6-months-of/