Judge Allows Danielle's Dad Back In Court: (Damon was banned for MAD-DOGGING Westerfield!)

North County Times-San Diego ^ | July 13, 2002 | Kimberly Epler

[RnMomof7]

Buffalo NY......Hardly the heartland:>)

We have crime here of course..our shares of murders and drugs.....but it is confined to a rather small area of the city (where I worked)

BTW I was NEVER afraid down there or in my home

[Stiv]

While the image of a drunken David Westerfield stumbling unnoticed through the VD house is to me one of the most unbelievable aspects of the prosecution case, another rather obvious thought just crossed my mind. I'm sure it's been brought up before on this board but I'm new here so anyway...

IF DW took the jacket to the dry cleaners BECAUSE it was stained with Danielle's blood, I must ask...WHY WOULD HE DO THAT? Think about it: here's a guy smart enough to eliminate HUGE amounts of evidence, leaving only a fingerprint and a few essentially meaningless fibers, but HE TAKES THE SINGLE MOST DAMNING PIECE OF EVIDENCE TO A DRY CLEANER? What, is he so in love with this jacket that he wants to make sure he gets to wear it on Death Row? He must be, because he could have:

1) Poured some gas on it and burned the thing to ashes out in the desert.
2) Ditched it in any one of thousands of nasty dumpsters behind covenience stores, shopping malls, etc. where it would soon wind up at the county dump and forever lost to posterity.
3) Tossed it in a Goodwill bin (chancy, but better than bringing it home, especially since it would be hard to prove it belonged to him once it got mixed in with a bunch of other clothes).

You get my drift.

[RnMomof7]

opps make surervision..supervision:>)

[MizSterious]

There are many discrepancies in those documents. Some might be bad wording, others have to be deliberate.

[Freedom2specul8]

Well, even though we're surrounded by country--you have to drive about an hour to get the country depending on the direction you're headed and where you are driving from...we are a city that has the same problems as any other city..remember the poster from earlier who talked about vigilante justice? Work in a domestic violence shelter for about 8 months and see if you don't understand him a little better. When you see women and children FLEEING for their lives, and what stands between them and their abuser is a piece of paper..ha ha, (restraining order)..you'll change your mind a bit about justice for victims. g'bye for now!

[RnMomof7]

My thought too..this man could have disposed of the bedding and the jacket easly..they are suggesting he hid or destroyed his boots..funny huh..He would destroy boots but not the coat..unbelievable

[nothingnew]

Banned for "Mad-Dogging" eh?...well if someone threw a bottle of cheap wine at me, I'd have him banned too.

FMCDH

[bolthead]

I noticed that both at his house and at the motorhome Westerfield was "overly cooperative" and kept pointing out areas that the detectives had "missed". My question is: If these are professional searchers, why do they keep "missing" things?

[Southflanknorthpawsis]

One mom to another..when I read that I got sick to my stomach.....easy come easy go..

Yep......and this is the same guy who is now staring daggers at Westerfield. Puhleeeeeeze !!!

It's an act and peformed to an extreme enough degree to garner public attention. It's orchestrated for whatever sick ulterior motive these immoral losers have in mind.

It may sound cold, but I think the only real van Dam "victim" is Danielle. These folks are thinking ahead. Money, cars, "parties", travel..........ahhhh the charmed life.

[Southflanknorthpawsis]

Oops......the other two victims are the remaining children. May God protect these little boys.

[MizSterious]

RnMomof7--A lot of the crime way is greatly exaggerated. If anyone missed John Stossel's show on ABC last night, here is a summary. One thing we need to keep in mind, especially with this case, is that abductions by strangers is extremely rare--media might make it seem as though it's more common than it is. This Danielle case, in my estimation, was not a stranger abduction. It wasn't even a "neighbor" abduction. I think it was much closer to home than that.

---

How Media Coverage Exaggerates Risks and Dangers

Commentary
By John Stossel

July 12

If you watch television news regularly, you can't help but think that the world is a very scary place.

You'll be hammered with a whole host of frightening stories about crime, terror threats, strange new diseases, or scary old ones. It's the media's job to inform us of these dangers, but does the amount of coverage reflect the risk we really face?

Remember last year's coverage of shark attacks? It seemed everywhere you looked someone in the press was talking about the "Summer of the Shark." You may have believed that shark attacks were on the rise. That's what some television stations reported. But it wasn't true.

Last year, shark attacks off American beaches were hardly different from previous years. Most of the reports mentioned that, but that important truth got lost amid the blare and blur of frightening headlines and images. While the media were busy scaring us out of the water, scientists said there was no increase in the number of sharks off our beaches and stressed that sharks were so unlikely to kill you that you're about 25 times more likely to be killed by lightning.

Revved-Up Road Hazards

If television isn't frightening you, then news magazines are ready to step in and fill that void. Newsweek, for example, claimed Americans were being "driven to destruction" by road rage. In their report, they quoted a study saying we were "increasingly being shot, stabbed, beaten and run over." Then television echoed with its own flurry of road-rage reports. On 20/20, ABCNEWS introduced a story by telling our viewers that they're surrounded by "strangers in their cars, ready to snap." We called road rage a frightening trend and a growing American danger.

The hype surrounding the reporting blew the real dangers out of proportion. Bob Lichter, president of the Center for Media and Public Affairs, which studies media coverage and has concluded that the media often distort or exaggerate threats. He said, "If road rage is something that's increasing ? we should see more fatalities on the road. There should be more reports of reckless driving. But these things are going down instead of up."

A justification for the media hype surrounding road rage was a study sponsored by the American Automobile Association (AAA) that chronicled reports of aggressive driving. According to a Time magazine story, which based its information the AAA report, road rage was up 51 percent in the first half of the 1990s.

Stefanie Faul, a spokeswoman for the AAA, said the consumer group based its analysis mostly on the number of road rage and aggressive driving incidents reported in the press. It was a strange sort of circular logic that fueled the spiraling coverage of road rage. The AAA study looked at police reports as well, but was largely based on media accounts.

Lichter said people have been yelling at each other in their cars for years. Journalists just found a term for it. A few years back, Lichter noted, a person might come and complain that somebody yelled at them from his car. Today, people go home and say they're victims of "road rage."

AAA's Faul said that the idea of violent death by strangers is a very common topic in news reports. "You know that if you get people excited about an issue ? that's what makes it appealing as a topic." She also added that small organizations like hers can't take on huge media conglomerates. Still, she admits that she didn't make an effort to correct the mischaracterization she saw in the press.

And before there was road rage, there were carjackings. The media told us that carjackings were making a comeback on Americans streets in the '90s. Greg McCrary, of the Threat Assessment Group, which works to point out that life's real dangers are far less dramatic than what the media may lead you to believe, said the chance of being killed in a carjacking is infinitesimally small.

McCrary said the mundane things pose greater risks on the road ? things like drunken driving and failing to fasten our seat belts. Like Faul, McCrary said these sorts of things just aren't attention-grabbing. "It doesn't sell on TV. Sex and violence sells," he said.

Paved With Good Intentions

Lichter agrees with McCrary's assessment. His organization noted that press coverage of murders increased by 700 percent in the 1990s, but the murder rate had fallen by half during the decade. Lichter said, "It's easier to point a camera at a blood-stained wall where a victim has just been taken away, than it is to dig into a book of dull, dry statistics."

According to Lichter, when there's not a major news story that has some dramatic element to it, newspapers and television stations will ramp up their coverage of things like shark attacks and carjackings to keep us buying papers and tuning in. Lichter said, "Journalists unconsciously train themselves to look for the story that really rivets your attention. And that story is, 'Wow, here's a disaster, oh my God.'"

A few years ago, for example, there were as many shark attacks, but it wasn't a summer of the shark. Perhaps because the media were busy covering the election. Back in 1995 there were 46 shark attacks, but the spotlight was on O.J. Simpson's murder trial. In 1998, the Monica Lewinsky story kept the shark attacks in the shadows.

Lichter said that reporters may have the best of intentions when the pursue a story, but often they stir up problems that really aren't there. This, Lichter said, poses a real danger to the public. Lichter said, "Bad journalism is worse than no journalism, because it leaves people thinking they know something that is, in fact, wrong."

[MizSterious]

Crime way = crime wave, obviously. I have a spell checker, but it missed that one.

[Jaded]

Oh, Kimmie, I think the investigation should have been done more thoroughly. I don't believe I have ever advocated stringing Damon up by his parts. If justice is what is truly being sought, so many things would not have been ignored and lies not told. Justice and truth in this case amount to only catch-phrases with little real value, IMO. That is truly sad.

I think that had prosecution presented solid evidence that David had been in Danielle's room or the VD house there would not be this need to spin.... Some time it is quite dizzying. I beseech you, pass the Dramamine, lest I faint dead away.

That said,

**FREE NINJA DAVE**FREE NINJA DAVE**FREE NINJA DAVE**

{{{Hugz}}}

[FresnoDA]

HOSEBROKEN THREADJACKALS...LOL

[RnMomof7]

Wow i lost my spell check a while back..can you tell:>)

[FresnoDA]

Thank you...and BTW...I would prefer NOT to parody a Madonna song...any others?

[FresnoDA]

BUMP 134 POST!!

[juzcuz]

To Miz: ...... The sharks are taking over....

I've got a shark story ... About a month ago hubby and I went fishing over night South of Biloxi, MS. We were night fishing for Bull Reds (big red fish), Mackeral, etc. We had live bait and dead smelly bait, etc. We caught Sharks,,,,, the largest one I landed was 4.5 ft. I had to have hubby help me reel cause it was stronger than me. After that, I was looking for shark recipes.. I found some too. Grilled shark is great.

[JudyB1938]

One good thing that might come out of press coverage is that law enforcement agencies and prosecutors might find themselves in a position to where they can't get away with the things they have heretofore.

People are a lot more knowledeable now, too, in making judgements - due to the current forensic/crime shows on TV.

[Yeti]

Is that a Faithful Transcription?

Just asking, because if it is, don't you think it Odd that they capitalized 'Adult Parties' in the affadavit? What is That supposed to be About? I thought it just meant don't bring the little Rugs Rats you have Turned Loose in my house to the Party.

Could it be Law Enforcement Innuendo? Maybe he sould have said I have Child Parties.