Questions Raised After Shooting Death of Former Cop Hired by Nexstar Station

A tragic event unfolded in the Bay Area after a former police officer hired by Nexstar’s KRON was shot and killed while he was assigned to protect an MMJ sent to cover a story.

Former Police Officer Kevin Nishita was hired by KRON as private security for an MMJ working on a story.

Some inside the KRON newsroom are raising some questions about the tragic event.

“It’s hard to say whether this was avoidable, but it seems like there should be a harder look taken before sending an MMJ to a bad area to follow up on a days old robbery. But that’s not all staff members are upset about. The shooting happened around 12:20pm on Wednesday, the KRON 4 staff was not notified by email until 1:47pm, nearly an hour and a half later. Most employees heard about the shooting from colleagues at OTHER STATIONS, because every other station sent out an email or text alert to staff members before KRON did,” said one KRON employee to FTVLive.

Here is the internal email that was sent to the staff by KRON News Director Josh Palefsky and obtained by FTVLive:

The KRON employee brings up another issue, saying that the station did not issue any public statement until after Nishita had died from his injuries.

The staff the asked this question, “Why did the GM not issue a statement immediately saying KRON 4 is saddened by what happened, our crews safety is a top priority, etc. At no time even via internal email or public statement has our KRON 4 news director or general manager expressed that our safety is of importance. Even if this wasn’t anyone’s fault, could you at least express some concern for your crews safety after a reporter was held at gun point and her security guard shot? The ONLY email we received from GM Jim Rose the day that it happened instructed everyone not to respond to press inquiries.”

It appears that the internal email that KRON GM Jim Rose sent to the staff, made it appear like he was more worried about the staff talking to outside media outlets, then about the staff itself.

An event like this will impact the staff in different ways and KRON should be putting a priority on the employees’ mental health in dealing with something like this.

Not worrying about who might be talking to outside press.

I get that you want to cover your ass, but the health and wellbeing of the staff should be a top pirority and it should be expressed from the top down.