Sun, May 7, 2023
A Rashomon of the 4am SWAT raid on the Martinez residence in San Gabriel. In a matter of seconds, David's father was shot in the arm and Pomona SWAT officer Shaun Diamond was shot in the neck, and later died... but who fired? Recordings of detective interviews show even police witnesses weren't sure what happened in the critical moments when the SWAT team breached the front door. We hear an emotional interview with Shaun's mother and letters from David's sister... showing how the shock of the incident devastated both families and how confusion about the narrative of the raid left them feeling powerless.
Sun, May 14, 2023
In our previous installments, two conflicting stories emerged: the SWAT team says David Martinez shot Officer Shaun Diamond in the first moments of the raid on the house in San Gabriel, but David's parents claim the officers shot their own man. Now we place you on the scene as David's story evolves from the seconds after the shooting to a pretrial conference three years later. In this installment, you'll hear the police dash cam audio, recordings in David's holding cell, his interview with detectives, audio from undercover officers posing as inmates, jail phone calls, and reenactments of David's preliminary hearing. Ultimately, the physical evidence leads us to the conclusion that David likely shot Officer Diamond; but did he pull the trigger in self defense, thinking the police were Mongols? With David's trial on the horizon, his public defender Brady Sullivan is left with a near impossible task: convincing a jury that a man who shot a police officer from approximately five feet away is not guilty of murder.
Sun, May 21, 2023
The 2014 SWAT raid on the Martinez home, which left a Pomona police officer dead, was part of a multi-jurisdictional operation targeting members of the Mongols Motorcycle Club. So what was David Martinez's relationship with the Mongols, and how did that relationship lead to a raid on his family home in San Gabriel? In this installment we zoom out from the night of the raid to see a bigger picture that includes the Mongols' long history with the ATF and David's fraught history with them. We then explore the SWAT raid itself with police militarization expert Radley Balko, plus the search warrant affidavit, police operations reports, and shocking interviews with detectives after the raid.
Sun, May 28, 2023
In 2019, the trial of David Martinez commenced in Courtroom 105 of the Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center in downtown LA. The prosecution sought to portray David as a dangerous gang member - a cold blooded killer who saw an opportunity to kill a cop and took his shot. In this installment, we follow the deputy district attorneys' argument through testimony reenactments and recordings of detective interviews, illustrating the impact of Shaun Diamond's death on his fellow Pomona police officers. We hear evidence presented by the prosecution that calls into question David's sobriety at the time of the shooting, as well as testimony that suggests that David heard the police announce themselves and saw them on the porch when he fired his weapon.