OC Supervisors Ban Pride Flag at County Properties Under New Policy

by Brandon Phoand Hosam ElattarJun 6, 2023

``Pride flags being waved at the "Ladera Love Pride Parade" event in Ladera Ranch on Friday June 25, 2021. (Omar Sanchez / Voice of OC)

A narrow majority of Orange County Supervisors on Tuesday voted to ban the rainbow Pride Flag from flying on all County of Orange properties, including the Civic Center and public parks.

Their vote restricts flags hoisted at the county to OC, state and national flags, along with a flag for U.S. prisoners of war and soldiers missing in action. 

Pride banners don’t currently fly outside county offices and properties, but Tuesday’s vote bans it and others from making their way up the flagpoles.

The ban on the iconic symbol for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender people was requested by Supervisor Andrew Do and supported by Supervisors Don Wagner and Doug Chaffee in the beginning of LGBTQ+ Pride month.

They said that flying any flag in advocacy of a group of people would open their policymaking sessions up to “divisive” public forums. 

“It’s a distraction,” said Chaffee. “It takes me away from really working to make the county better.”

Do argued his proposal wasn’t motivated by any one cause or social issue and that he has routinely supported the LGBTQ+ community. 

People who opposed the Pride Flag praised Do’s proposal during Tuesday’s public comment – calling the symbol “divisive” and “sinful” – and looked on as Do attempted to dissuade any notion he was targeting it.

Do recounted the times he helped transgender people get vaccinated against COVID-19 and hired a gay man to the county’s top public health leadership role. 

Wagner, however, made it clear that his support for Do’s proposal was indeed a response to flying the Pride Flag.

“It is not a coincidence that this policy is in front of us right now. It is not a coincidence that we’re considering it today for the first time in the more than 100 years of this County’s existence,” he said at Tuesday’s meeting. 

“We’re considering it today, in response to the divisive effort to fly one particular flag. So yes, there absolutely is a connection,” Wagner said.

Supervisors Vicente Sarmiento and Katrina Foley, who wore pins in support of the Pride Flag during the discussion, voted against the ban, arguing their colleagues were capitulating to hate.

“By taking the stance today of banning the Pride Flag, which is what this is tantamount to, at all of our county buildings, our county board offices, other than in our internal offices, our parks, our airport, our harbors, our beaches, it sends the wrong message to America and to the world,” Foley said.

The county supervisors’ debate got tense with an audience consisting of people who supported the county flying the flag, while others were against the idea.

At one point, Foley asked Do if the flags flown by the OC Sheriff would then violate his new policy. 

The police appreciation week flag – “are they not allowed to fly that any more?” Foley said.

“You’re free to ask and I’m free to ignore you,” Do said while some people in the audience laughed.

Toward the vote, Foley told her opposing colleagues: 

“I’m through with this discussion but I’m not through with you.”

The idea of flying a Pride Flag on government property is often split down political lines, like most recently in Huntington Beach.

But things played out a little differently on Tuesday. 

Chaffee – a Democrat – sided with Republicans Do and Wagner on voting for the flag restriction policy. 

Sarmiento and Foley, both Democrats, voted against the policy.

In the lead-up to Tuesday’s regular Board of Supervisors meeting, both Sarmiento and Foley attempted to place a separate proposal on the agenda for a discussion on purchasing and flying the flag on county property. 

That request was denied by Wagner, the board’s chairman, who told Voice of OC he went with Do’s request with the idea it would tee-up the entire discussion. 

Sarmiento pointed to his hometown of Santa Ana, where he previously served as Mayor, and the similar Pride Flag push back they faced.

“The sky hasn’t fallen, we have not become more divided. We have not separated. If anything, it’s shown that we are inclusive, if anything, it’s shown that we are supportive of those communities that we know have been the targets of hate,” he said.

The decision comes amid a stark rise of hate crimes against the LGBTQ+ community.

The OC Human Relations Commission put out the annual hate crime reportin September which showed an 83% increase in hate crimes against the LGBTQ+ community in 2021.

Hate crimes against the LGBTQ+ community have increased by 2,100% since 2017, according to the commission.

The action came months after Huntington Beach City Council members voted to implement a similar policy restricting what flags can be raised over city properties.

[Read: Huntington Beach Officials Ban Pride Banner at City Properties Under New Flag Restrictions]

Fifteen people spoke during the public comment portion of the item – with seven people arguing that policy was aimed at the Pride flag and that not raising the banner was an attempt to erase the community and limit their visibility.

One speaker, Uyen Hoang, Executive Director of Viet Rainbow of OC, addressed Do as a fellow Vietnamese American. 

“I remember you coming out to our LGBTQ+ COVID-19 vaccine clinic and I thought, ‘Wow, that’s great. It looks like you care about the LGBTQ communities and what we face.’” 

Now she found himself asking him not to go through with a Pride Flag ban. 

“As a fellow Vietnamese American, you know how meaningful flags can be to the community. I’m asking you to connect with me on that end so we can bridge some understanding about the issue.”

She then restated her comments for him in Vietnamese.

Brandon Pho is a Voice of OC reporter and corps member with Report for America, a GroundTruth initiative. Contact him at bpho@voiceofoc.org or on Twitter @photherecord.

Hosam Elattar is a Voice of OC reporter and corps member with Report for America, a GroundTruth initiative. Contact him at helattar@voiceofoc.org or on Twitter @ElattarHosam.

https://voiceofoc.org/2023/06/oc-supervisors-ban-pride-flag-at-county-properties-under-new-policy/

Use of O.C. jail snitches faulted; Constitutional rights of defendants were violated, Justice Department says.

Hernandez, Salvador; Winton, Richard

; Gabriel San Roman; Queally, James

.  Los Angeles Times ; Los Angeles, Calif. [Los Angeles, Calif]. 14 Oct 2022: A.1.  

For years, some of OrangeCounty's most powerful figures sought to downplay accusations that prosecutors and sheriff's deputies were using jailhouse informants in a way that ran afoul of the U.S. Constitution.

Then-Dist. Atty. Tony Rackauckas decried the situation as a "media witch hunt" in 2017, even after the so-called snitch scandal sparked a retrial in a murder case and wrecked proceedings against the defendant in the worst mass shooting in countyhistory. A civil grand jury investigation somehow arrived at the conclusion that the entire situation was a "myth."

Even a years-long investigation by the California attorney general's office ended with a whimper: No public accounting of the scandal was given, and no criminal charges were filed against sheriff's deputies who, a judge ruled, "lied or willfully withheld material evidence" about the informant scandal in court.

But on Thursday, the U.S. Department of Justice's civil rights division confirmed what attorneys, activists and crime victims have long been shouting: that the OrangeCountySheriff's Department and district attorney's office systematically violated the constitutional rights of defendants for the better part of a decade.

In a scathing 63-page report, federal investigators said the two agencies repeatedly violated defendants' due process rights from 2007 to 2016, when the Sheriff's Department housed jailhouse informants near high-profile inmates to elicit confessions.

In many cases, the inmates had already been charged with the crimes they were being prodded to discuss, making the tactic a clear violation of their 6th Amendment right to have an attorney present.

"This report's findings represent a critically important development for the county's justice system. We have been alleging since 2014 the same civil rights violations analyzed by the Department of Justice, and now we finally have a governmental agency that describes why we were right and lays out just how bad the conduct has been by both agencies," said OrangeCountyAssistant Public Defender Scott Sanders, who first uncovered the scandal.

While it isn't uncommon for jailed informants to offer information to prosecutors or investigators, deputies with the Sheriff's Department's Special Handling Unit built a stable of snitches to launch at defendants charged with serious crimes.

The Justice Department's findings come eight years after evidence of the scandal was uncovered during the trial of Scott Dekraai, who slaughtered his ex-wife and seven others during a mass shooting inside a Seal Beach salon in 2011. While Dekraai admitted to carrying out the massacre, investigators feared he would seek an insanity defense to avoid the death penalty. So they placed an informant, Fernando Perez, in an adjoining cell.

Sanders, Dekraai's attorney, filed a motion seeking to learn more about Perez's history of working with law enforcement, setting off a chain of events that would force the Sheriff's Department to disclose evidence about its tactic of placing informants near high-profile defendants.

In total, 21 defendants accused of murder or other serious crimes of violence have had their convictions vacated, new trials ordered or sentences reduced as a result of the scandal, according to Sanders.

Rackauckas, the district attorney during the period when the misconduct occurred, did not respond to requests for comment.

Sandra Hutchens, the sheriffat the time, died in 2021.

Orange CountySheriffDonBarnes, who was an undersheriff during much of that time, said the agency has already heavily reformed the way it uses informants.

"I look forward to the DOJ reviewing our current policies, processes and procedures regarding custodial informants," he said in a statement. "I am confident they will find our current practices have addressed many of their recommendations, and anticipate a prompt and complete resolution to this matter."

The Department of Justice report determined that OrangeCountyofficials repeatedly violated the 6th Amendment, which grants defendants the right to have an attorney present when questioned by law enforcement, and the 14th Amendment, which requires prosecutors to disclose evidence favorable to a defendant.

At least five prosecutors were aware that one informant, Oscar Moriel, was cooperating with the Sheriff's Department. But when the informant program was exposed during the Dekraai case, prosecutors admitted they "had failed to properly disclose evidence about Moriel in all of the cases in which he participated."

The report also confirmed that the Sheriff's Department created a so-called snitch tank: a unit at the county's main jail where law enforcement knew informants were likely to be housed. Deputies also sometimes used "disciplinary isolation" to put informants and targets together, according to the report, punishing minor violations with solitary confinement to allow informants more time to win over particular defendants.

The snitch scandal has underpinned countypolitics for years. Hutchens declined to run for reelection in the fallout from the controversy. In his successful 2018 campaign, Dist. Atty. Todd Spitzer frequently attacked Rackauckas for the fiasco on his way to ousting his longtime rival.

Spitzer said Thursday that the report detailed "the very issues that I ran on" and validated his push to "clean up the public corruption that existed under the prior administration." He also referenced a report he published after ordering an internal investigation of the scandal in 2020.

But the federal report dismissed Spitzer's inquiry as a shallow review of five cases affected by the misuse of informants.

Spitzer's investigation concluded that it was unclear whether prosecutors had done anything wrong, according to the federal report.

But the Department of Justice said two of the cases resulted in retrials due to the misuse of informants, and there was "reasonable cause" to think prosecutors had erred in the other three.

The federal report also found that the Sheriff's Department hid records for tracking and managing informants in the jail. During trials, prosecutors concealed the true origin of the information they presented, the report said.

The fallout from the scandal led then-OrangeCountySuperior Court Judge Thomas Goethals to remove the district attorney's office from the Dekraai trial. Ultimately, Goethals chose to spare Dekraai from a death sentence because he did not believe the defendant could receive a fair trial due to the Sheriff's Department's rampant misconduct.

The federal report acknowledged that both agencies have made some reforms in the wake of the scandal. Spitzer and Barnes have implemented policies governing the use of informants that were largely nonexistent before 2014. Deputies must now gain the permission of the district attorney's office before using a jailhouse informant.

Spitzer also fired a senior assistant district attorney for failing to properly disclose information about the use of informants to defense attorneys in a homicide case. Two other veteran homicide prosecutors resigned or retired while they were under investigation for their role in the scandal. Three deputies who were under investigation by the state attorney general's office also resigned in the scandal's fallout.

Still, the report criticized both agencies for failing to adequately reform their practices and issued recommendations for further reform. The report presented 23 sweeping recommendations for both agencies, including formal training for employees.

The report also urged the countyto create an independent body to further review past prosecutions and investigations that were possibly tainted by the scandal.

"There are some good recommendations," Sanders said, "but they will not materialize without incredibly careful oversight, so that is my hope."

Others feared the report didn't go far enough. Paul Wilson, whose wife, Christy, was among Dekraai's victims, said the Department of Justice should have named specific prosecutors and deputies who failed to meet their duties.

"That's the only thing that is going to make change, is to name names and hold people accountable," Wilson said. "I know Spitzer is sitting in that big chair ... and I know Barnes is too, and they're just laughing this thing off."

Caption: PHOTO: MANY CONVICTIONS have been reversed because of the scandal. Above, the countyjail in Santa Ana.

PHOTOGRAPHER:Gary Coronado Los Angeles Times

Word count: 1296

Copyright Los Angeles Times Oct 14, 2022

Video shows O.C. sheriff's deputies fatally shooting Black man - Los Angeles Times

Richard Winton

9/24/2020

lATIMTES

The fatal shooting of a Black man by two Orange County sheriff’s deputies during a struggle in San Clemente, captured on video, spurred a protest and the arrest of several activists who blockaded a street Thursday.

At least five protesters were taken into custody when about 50 people demonstrated at the site of the killing. They chanted, “No justice, no peace” and said the deputies didn’t need to use deadly force on the man.

San Clemente officials implemented a 9 p.m. curfew Thursday seeking to quell any late-night protests like those that have led to confrontations in cities across the nation.

In a cellphone video of Wednesday’s shooting, two sheriff’s deputies can be seen confronting the man, later identified as Kurt Andras Reinhold, in the middle of El Camino Real. The deputies wrestle him to the ground. After a voice, presumably that of a deputy, yells, “He’s got my gun,” two shots can be heard in the video, which was first posted by Local Story.

The videobegins with the deputies, part of a specialized detail that handles homeless issues, seeking to control Reinhold, 42.

The deputies then push and grab Reinhold and wrestle him to the ground on a grassy area on the sidewalk about 1:15 p.m. near the Hotel Miramar.

Reinhold wiggles on the ground as the deputies try to apply their weight to him and restrain his arms.

A voice then yells, “He’s got my gun, he’s got my gun.”

The video, recorded by a bystander on the opposite curb, does not show enough detail to determine whether Reinhold reached for the deputy’s gun.

But within a second, two shots can be heard, and the bystander recording the video says, “Oh my God.”

A second video shows the deputies performing CPR on the man.

Sheriff Don Barnes said Thursday that Reinhold tried to unholster a deputy’s weapon.

“It is not clear if Mr. Reinhold was able to get the weapon out of the holster,” he said.

The sheriff displayed a grainy photo that he said showed Reinhold grabbing the gun. Barnes said the image came from surveillance video from a security camera at a nearby business. The Times has not reviewed the video.

“Obviously it ended in a way we did not hope,” Barnes said. “Weapon retention is one of the first things taught in the academy.”

The shooting has echoes of the killing of Charly “Africa” Keunang by Los Angeles police officers during a violent confrontation on the sidewalk of skid row in 2015. Keunang was shot after a rookie officer yelled that the homeless, mentally ill man was going for his gun as they wrestled.

The Los Angeles County district attorney declined to charge the officers, saying Keunang had his fingers around the gun and presented a reasonable threat. His death led to questions about the number of police shootings involving unhoused people struggling with mental illness.

Carrie Braun, a spokeswoman for the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, said she could not say what led to the detention of Reinhold, because deputies did not convey that information as part of their required statement on the shooting. She said that information will be gathered by the Orange County district attorney’s investigators who handle shootings by sheriff’s deputies.

Reinhold had lived in San Clemente for 30 days, the sheriff said, and had been approached about receiving shelter but declined. Barnes said the deputies are part of a unit that specializes in homeless services and were familiar with Reinhold. They have been trained in de-escalation techniques, he said.

Activists carrying banners and signs reading “Stop Killing Black People” stood in the street Thursday demanding justice for Reinhold.

Jackson Hinkle, a former San Clemente City Council candidate and one of the protest organizers, called on the sheriff to dismiss the deputies and for Dist. Atty. Todd Spitzer to charge them with second-degree murder for what Hinkle said amounted to killing a man for jaywalking.

Deputies wearing helmets and tactical vests and carrying batons formed a skirmish line and removed protesters from the roadway, arresting several of them on suspicion of obstruction.

Some residents said they were stunned by the shooting, with one saying they had seen Reinhold minutes before he was killed.

“He went to the flower store and asked for money because he was hungry,” Melinda Steinmetz told the Orange County Register.“Then he went to get something to eat, and the next thing we knew, he was dead in the street.”

Najee Ali, a civil rights activist working with Reinhold’s relatives, said late Thursday that “this was an unjustified murder.”

“The only person who de-escalated this situation was Kurt when he said don’t touch me,” Ali said. “This went wrong from very start.”

Ali said he doesn’t know if Reinhold touched the gun but doubts he was aware of it he if did: “He was flailing around, scared for his life.”

The Los Angeles activist said Reinhold was an educated man struggled who with mental illness that severely impacted his life.

“They stopped him for jaywalking in a beach city where it’s common,” Ali said. “For too long, Black folks have seen minor offenses used as pretext to detain and harass them.”

Ali said protesters were met with counterprotesters Thursday night, and a man walked up to him and warned him to get back to South L.A.

Police use-of-force experts said the situation Wednesday was difficult and escalated despite the initial calm efforts of the deputies to remove Reinhold from a busy thoroughfare.

“The gentleman presents a danger to himself and motorists,” said Ed Obayashi, a deputy in Plumas County, Calif., and state training expert on the use of force. “The deputies are trying to get him out of the street. He is being belligerent and denying what he is doing, and they are calm and just repeating instructions.”

Obayashi said it would have been better if the deputies had applied more pressure to Reinhold’s arm quickly to subdue him. He said that if Reinhold did try to get a deputy’s gun, then deadly force would be considered necessary — the standard under California law.

“People will ask, ‘Why did they not just Taser him before the fight began?’ Well, what then was the threat he poses to justify that?” Obayashi said.

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-09-24/black-man-shooting-killed-oc-deputies

Man fatally shot during confrontation with deputies in San Clemente

Eric Licas, Erika I. Ritchie

By Eric Licas | elicas@scng.com and Erika I. Ritchie | eritchie@scng.com | Orange County Register

PUBLISHED: September 23, 2020 at 2:56 p.m. | UPDATED: September 24, 2020 at 6:58 p.m.

From <https://www.ocregister.com/2020/09/23/suspect-in-altercation-with-deputies-fatally-shot-in-san-clemente/>

A man was shot and fatally injured by at least one sheriff’s deputy during an altercation in San Clemente on Wednesday afternoon, Sept. 23, authorities said.

At about 1:12 pm, two Orange County Sheriff’s Department deputies with the city’s homeless outreach team were on patrol near the Hotel Miramar and attempted to make contact with a man described as homeless, the department said.

“Shortly after they contacted him, a physical altercation broke out,” said OCSD Sgt. Dennis Breckner. “Shortly after that two gunshots were fired.”

The deputies made lifesaving efforts, but the man died.

Investigators at the scene where a Black male was shot and killed by police in front of Hotel Miramar in San Clemente on Wednesday, September 23, 2020. Sgt. Dennis Breckner said a struggle took place and the man reached for a deputy’s gun before he was shot twice. An internal investigation will take place. (Photo by Mindy Schauer, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Investigators at the scene where a Black male was shot and killed by police in front of Hotel Miramar in San Clemente on Wednesday, September 23, 2020. Sgt. Dennis Breckner said a struggle took place and the man reached for a deputy’s gun before he was shot twice. An internal investigation will take place. (Photo by Mindy Schauer, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Expand

Breckner said officials reviewed video of the incident from a cell phone and from a nearby surveillance camera at a business. The latter shows the man reaching for a deputy’s weapon, he said. The scuffle began on the sidewalk, went out to the street and then ended back on the sidewalk, Breckner said.

The man who was shot is heard shouting “stop touching me,” as he attempts to walk past two deputies trying to detain him in footage posted to social media by South OC Black Lives Matter. The deputies point to the sidewalk and ask him to sit down, and he refuses.

At some point in the video, deputies are seen knocking the man to the ground. They scream at the man moments before a shot is fired, then another.

Chloe Miller, 23, said she saw two deputies and a man blocking traffic in the middle of northbound El Camino Real, just north of Avenida San Gabriel, at about 1:13 p.m.

The man appeared to have both hands in the air when she arrived, she said. But Breckner disputed whether his hands were raised in surrender.

Miller reached to her backpack to retrieve her glasses, and by the time she looked back up the man had crossed to the southbound side of the street and was tackled by deputies, she said. Miller heard what sounded like gunfire moments later.

“I heard two shots, and it was after he was on the ground,” Miller said.

Deputies were attempting to detain the suspect standing in the street, Breckner said. They eventually wound up in a “ground fight” with the suspect, which led to a struggle for a firearm. Deputies had not drawn a firearm prior to the physical altercation, he said.

Breckner said an investigation will determine if the gunshots came from just one deputy or if both were involved. The Orange County District Attorney’s office will investigate the incident, which is typical for deputy-involved shootings. The Sheriff’s Department will also conduct an administrative investigation.

“Right now it appears only one fired,” Breckner said. Authorities did not immediately specify if the man was armed. Information on his identity was not immediately available.

Breckner said the man who was shot is Black, and that his race was not part of the investigation. However, he said the department would be as transparent as possible given the state of the relationship between communities of color and police.

There were more than a dozen other people at the intersection at the time of the shooting, Miller said. Witnesses described the man as “William” in his mid 30s.

The man who died was formally identified as Kurt Andras Reinhold, 42, a Sheriff’s statement said Thursday.

“He went to the flower store and asked for money because he was hungry,” said Melinda Steinmetz, a local resident. “Then he went to get something to eat and the next thing we knew, he was dead in the street.”

Another woman, Cindy Cannon, who works at 7-Eleven, said she has known the man for years.

“He came in here all the time and we had to help him because he was blind.”

Cannon said she found and gave him a white cane seven years ago.

Officials do not believe he was blind, based on the way he interacted with deputies, Breckner said.

“He was looking at deputies when he was talking to them,” and appeared to move around deputies, he said.

Witness statements that the man who was shot was blind were not accurate, officials later said.

This story was updated to formally identify the man shot, according to officials, as Kurt Andras Reinhold, 42.

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-09-24/black-man-shooting-killed-oc-deputies

 O.C. sheriff's deputy accused of sexually assaulting two inmates

Wigglesworth, Alex

; Los Angeles, Calif. [Los Angeles, Calif]. 14 Aug 2022: B.7

From <https://www.proquest.com/latimes/docview/2701646058/fulltext/FCA4C06592A74297PQ/13?accountid=6749>

An Orange County sheriff's deputy has been arrested on suspicion of sexually assaulting multiple women who were incarcerated at Theo Lacy jail, authorities said.

Arcadio Rodriguez, 30, is accused of sexually assaulting two women on separate occasions by touching them and showing them pornographic videos in their housing locations, the Orange County Sheriff's Department said in a news release. The assaults date back to May, the release said.

The sheriff's department became aware of the allegations on Monday, when jail staff "intercepted communication that described the misconduct," and launched an investigation, the release said. Rodriguez was placed on administrative leave Tuesday, according to officials.

He was booked into the Santa Ana Jail on Friday on suspicion of felony sexual activity between a peace officer and inmate in a jail facility, and misdemeanor assault under the color of authority and possession of a cellphone in a custody facility, the Sheriff's Department said. The case will be referred to the OrangeCountyDistrict Attorney's Office for prosecution, according to authorities.

Orange County Sheriff Don Barnes said in a statement that he has notified the countyOffice of Independent Review, a watchdog agency that oversees the Sheriff's Department and district attorney's office, to ensure the investigation is objective and thorough.

"The suspected criminal actions of this deputy are inexcusable, especially for a person who swore to serve and protect our community," Barnes said.

Word count: 230

Copyright Los Angeles Times Aug 14, 2022

From <https://www.proquest.com/latimes/docview/2701646058/fulltext/FCA4C06592A74297PQ/13?accountid=6749>

CA sheriff refuses to release 1,800 inmates after judge's order: 'Serious threat' to community

ACLU lawsuit sought release of medically vulnerable inmates due to COVID concerns

By Caleb Parke | Fox News    December 15, 2020

Orange County sheriff refuses to release 1,800 inmates after judge's order: 'Serious threat' to community

Orange County, Calif., Sheriff Don Barnes pushed back against an "absurd" order from a local Superior Court judge ordering the release of 1,800 inmates, including some who are locked up for murder and child molestation, due to the coronavirus.

"I have no intention of doing that, of releasing those individuals back into the community. I think they pose a serious threat," Barnes told "Fox & Friends."

The decision by the court was made in response to an April lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in an effort to protect disabled and medically vulnerable people at the Orange County Jail, reports said, but Barnes plans to appeal.

CALIFORNIA OFFICIALS BLAST COURT RULING TO REDUCE ORANGE COUNTY JAIL POPULATION

"We've released 1,400 inmates to date since March for low-level offenders. The only inmates remaining now are serious offenders," he explained. "Of the medically vulnerable, 90 of them are in custody for murder or attempted murder, 94 for child molestation."

In the order, Judge Peter Wilson wrote that Barnes’ “deliberate indifference to the substantial risk of serious harm from COVID-19 infection to … medically vulnerable people in [his] custody violates their rights," according to KCBS-TV of Los Angeles.

CALIFORNIA RESTAURANT OWNER SLAMS GOV. NEWSOM'S 'HYPOCRISY,' 'MISMANAGEMENT' AMID CORONAVIRUS SHUTDOWNS

"Everybody in the community is at risk of COVID right now," Barnes said in response to the judge, adding, "not considering the risk to the public they present by being released back into the community, I think is not only absurd, I think it places the community at significant risk ..."

The sheriff also pushed back against the judge's claims that the jail was not testing for the coronavirus or providing a safe environment. 

From <https://www.foxnews.com/politics/sheriff-california-orange-county-jail-judge-inmates-don-barnes>

Orange County cop spotted with right-wing 'extremist' patches, prompting investigation from sheriff's department

Charles R. Davis

Jun 3, 2020, 7:22 PM PDT

Members of the Orange County Sheriff's Office in May 25, 2016. REUTERS/Mike Blake

• An Orange County sheriff's deputy was spotted at a Black Lives Matter protest in Costa Mesa wearing patches that appear to represent an allegiance to the Oath Keepers and Three Percenters movement.

• The Oath Keepers and Three Percenters are considered right-wing extremist movements by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Each has been linked to acts of violence.

• "The deputy's decision to wear these patches, and the implication of his association with an extremist group, is unacceptable and deeply concerning to me," Orange County Sheriff Don Barnes said in a statement.

Police have launched an internal investigation after a sheriff's deputy in Southern California was spotted with patches on his uniform that appear to be for a right-wing extremist movement.

In a video posted online Tuesday, an officer at a protest against police brutality in Costa Mesa can be seen wearing patches that appear to have the symbols for the Oath Keepers and the Three Percent Movement. 

"The deputy's decision to wear these patches, and the implication of his association with an extremist group, is unacceptable and deeply concerning to me," Orange County Sheriff Don Barnes said in a statement on Wednesday. 

"Any symbol can have multiple meanings and is open to interpretation," Barnes maintained while adding: "Instances like this can forge a wedge separating law enforcement from the community we serve, especially during these turbulent times."

The Democratic Party of Orange County earlier denounced the sheriff's deputy and urged people to call the sheriff's office to demand an investigation. "We need trustworthy officers of the law who serve and protect ALL," it said. "There is no place for far-right militia extremism on OC's taxpayer dime."

In 2015, heavily armed members of the Oath Keepers arrived in Ferguson, Missouri, during the civil unrest after the police killing of Michael Brown where, per the Southern Poverty Law Center, they "were seen on rooftops patrolling in what they said was an effort to protect businesses from rioters." The group, which "claims tens of thousands of present and former law enforcement officials and military veterans as members," according to the SPLC, believes it is fighting an elite plot to impose a "New World Order" and one-world, socialist government.

The Three Percent movement was founded in 2008, so named for the percentage of US colonists who allegedly fought against the British during the American Revolutionary War. Its stated goal is to restore "our Constitutional Republic," but while it pledges to only use force in self-defense, and as "a last resort," its professed followers have been linked to acts of domestic terrorism.

In 2018, Michael B. Harri, a former sheriff's deputy and the head of a group called the White Rabbit Three Percent Illinois Patriot Freedom Freedom Fighters Militia, was arrested in connection with the bombing of a mosque in Minnesota, as The Center for Investigative Reporting noted. "Three percenters were photographed in military-style combat gear guarding the perimeter of [the 2017] white supremacist Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia," the center reported.

Have a news tip? Email this reporter: cdavis@insider.com

https://www.insider.com/orange-county-cop-spotted-with-right-wing-extremist-patches-2020-6

OC Sheriff Draws Heat Over Raised Thin Blue Line Flag, Protests Continue Over George Floyd’s Death

byBrandon PhoMay 29, 2020

Updated Dec 8, 2020

image: The Orange County Sheriffs Department headquarters in Santa Ana. Credit:JULIE LEOPO, Voice of OC

Pictures of a Thin Blue Line flag raised at an Orange County courthouse on Thursday amidst nationwide protests over the death of George Floyd, a Black man, at the hands of Minneapolis police raised a host of questions for Sheriff Don Barnes from local activists. 

The flag was originally dedicated to police officers years ago but has recently become popularized within Blue Lives Matter, a pro-law enforcement countermovement to Black Lives Matter, which seeks an end to police violence and systemic racism toward Black people in America.

An image of the flag outside the Lamoreaux Justice Center in Orange appeared on Twitter Thursday, with activist groups like Chispa OC, CA Immigrant Youth and VietRISE criticizing Barnes, who himself has denounced Floyd’s death and the Minneapolis officers involved and called on his deputies in light of the incident to use “de-escalation strategies.”

Sheriff spokeswoman Carrie Braun said the flag was raised as part of an annual Orange County Peace Officers’ Memorial Day ceremony that the department participates in, and that the flag was “completely unrelated” to the events in Minnesota and wasn’t a political statement in support of Blue Lives Matter. 

The ceremony is held every last Thursday in May, on an annual basis, according to the memorial ceremony’s website. Braun said the raising of the flag “has only to do with the celebration and honoring of Orange County’s peace officers and the 53 who have died in Orange County.”

Critics like local Santa Ana organizer Hairo Cortes called the use of the flag “tone deaf,” after news of Floyd’s death in police custody — and video of a white Minneapolis police officer pressing his knee against Floyd’s neck — prompted demonstrations across the country. 

A similar protest is planned for Orange tomorrow at 1:00 p.m.

“Context matters,” Cortes said over the phone Friday. “We’ve had these multiple days of protests starting in Minneapolis, expanding across the country, and we can’t deny the association of the thin blue line flag with the Blue Lives Matter movement anymore.”

He called the flag “problematic on a normal day.”

Though the flag itself dates back before the start of the Blue Lives Matter movement, “as much as the thin blue line flag tries to be disassociated that, the reality is the two can’t be separated,” said Carlos Perea, a police reform advocate and Santa Ana’s first undocumented city commissioner. 

You’ve got to be kidding us! A Thin Blue Line flag flying at half mast at the Lamoreux Justice Center, a courthouse in #OrangeCounty by the OC Sheriffs. pic.twitter.com/zSvlxeJWVx

— Chispa (@ChispaOC) May 29, 2020

In early May, San Francisco’s police chief banned officers from wearing face coverings emblazoned with the thin blue line symbol, calling them divisive. This was after officers wore them while at a May Day protest, sparking complaints.

OC Sheriff Don Barnes in a May 28 memo said “the death of George Floyd was wrong,” and that “equally troubling” was the fact that “three officers stood by while their partner acted in a manner that contradicts his sworn commitment to protect and serve.” He said what occurred in the video “goes beyond the scope of any tactic we are trained to use.”

In the statement, he added the department trains deputies to “use de-escalation strategies,” though training and policies “are only as good as the people entrusted with carrying them out.”

“I want the community to know that our department does not use these techniques, nor do we teach them at our Academy,” he said in a tweet with the statement attached.

Braun said the flag is “a national symbol to represent the brave men and women who gave their lives defending individuals in not only Orange County, but also across the nation.”

Bobby McDonald, president of the Black Chamber of Commerce of Orange County, said he wasn’t yet ready to comment on the flag Friday afternoon. The chamber advocates and promotes the general welfare and progress of the local Black community through economic development.

Juan Viramontes, president of the Association of Orange County Deputy Sheriffs, didn’t respond to requests for comment through a spokesperson Friday.

Cortes said issues of police violence, accountability and oversight hit home in Orange County, across cities like Anaheim, Santa Ana, and Fullerton. 

In Anaheim, criticisms around police use of force on Latinos have long been part of the city’s history, and largely gave rise to one of the county’s most prominent Latino political venues, Los Amigos de Orange County.

Anaheim became the first Orange County city to establish a civilian police oversight board, formed in 2014 in response to protests and unrest in the city following the fatal shootings of two Anaheim men by police officers two years earlier.

And in Fullerton in 2012, three council members were voted out of their seats following the scandal around the police beating death of homeless man Kelly Thomas. The incident became one of the county’s most notorious police brutality incidents and made national news headlines. 

In Santa Ana, ongoing debates have played out over the role of police in politics and City Council elections and campaigns. This month, Republican councilwoman Ceci Iglesias was removed from her position as councilwoman in a recall election that resulted from a year-long campaign funded mostly by the city’s police union, which represents officers during labor negotiations. She had been publicly clashing with the union over controversial pay raises granted to officers last year.

In October, Santa Ana considered becoming the second city behind Anaheim to establish a police review board, at the request of Iglesias — who at the time had started clashing with the union — though council members ultimately opted not to.

Brandon Pho is a Voice of OC staff writer and corps member with Report for America, a GroundTruth initiative. Contact him at bpho@voiceofoc.org or on Twitter @photherecord.

From <https://voiceofoc.org/2020/05/oc-sheriff-draws-heat-over-thin-blue-line-flag-raised-while-protests-continue-over-george-floyds-death/>

Orange County Sheriff's Dept. Mishandled Evidence; Kept It Quiet For Nearly 2 Years

December 5, 2019

Vanessa Romo npr.org

IMAGE: Orange County Sheriff Don Barnes, pictured in May, said his department was not obligated to inform the district attorney about the audits related to evidence booking. But, he added, they were mentioned in criminal cases referred to the district attorney's office. MediaNews Group/Orange County Register/MediaNews Group via Getty Images hide caption

MediaNews Group/Orange County Register/MediaNews Group via Getty Images

Orange County Sheriff Don Barnes, pictured in May, said his department was not obligated to inform the district attorney about the audits related to evidence booking. But, he added, they were mentioned in criminal cases referred to the district attorney's office.

 MediaNews Group/Orange County Register/MediaNews Group via Getty Images

A law enforcement scandal that could impact thousands of criminal cases in Orange County, Calif., is pitting the region's top attorneys and sheriffs against one another.

The county's public defender's office on Wednesday suggested that top prosecutors covered for law enforcement, helping to keep widespread lapses in evidence booking out of public view. Now, Assistant Public Defender Scott Sanders is demanding to know who knew what and when.

An internal investigation conducted two years ago by the Orange County Sheriff's Department, the findings of which were not made public at the time, uncovered systematic mishandling of evidence. Deputies are required to turn in evidence at the end of their shift, but the audit found that more than 70% of them failed to do so. Instead, officers frequently waited days, weeks or even months to submit key evidence, including seized drugs, cash, photos and videos pertaining to criminal cases.

According to the report obtained from the Orange County public defender's office by NPR, nearly a third of evidence collected between February 2016 to February 2018, which included more than 98,000 department records, was submitted after the department's mandated end-of-shift deadline. On average, deputies delayed booking evidence for 3 1/2 days. Additionally, 27% of deputies had held on to evidence for 31 days or longer. In some cases, they never submitted any evidence at all, even when they said they had.

The alarming results prompted a second, much smaller audit of a sample group about a year later, in February 2019, according to sheriff's officials. That brought even grimmer news. After extensive research, auditors determined that 47% of the reports that were supposed to include evidence did not.

The auditors concluded that "cultural idleness" within the sheriff's department had led to inconsistent and inaccurate entries into the property evidence system. They also found insufficient booking software and "no system of accountability."

The findings cast doubt on the authenticity of evidence, raise concerns about chain-of-custody rules and could possibly force a reexamination of adjudicated criminal cases. The ramifications could be immense, potentially reversing sentences for people whose convictions relied on tainted evidence.

"The implications are massive," Sanders told NPR.

"If we take their numbers, take them at their word, then by their own account we're in the zone of 9,000 missing pieces of evidence," he said.

Despite the risk to defendants' constitutional rights, the sheriff's department did not share the information with any outside agencies or county departments. It wasn't until Nov. 18, when the Orange County Register was on the brink of publishing a story detailing the audits, that the sheriff's department told county supervisors of their existence.

"Of course, they're going to want to minimize the impact, because the truth is they have no idea how many cases this affects," Sanders said.

Sanders said he learned of the internal audits while working with a source on a different case. It was his request for the report that tipped off reporters, he said.

District Attorney Todd Spitzer told NPR that his office was also kept in the dark about the scope and disturbing results of the audits until a reporter called with questions on the same day. Since then, he said, the sheriff's department has ignored two requests from his office to share the initial report and all information pertaining to cases where evidence was mishandled.

But Sheriff Don Barnes disputes that version of events. He told NPR that Spitzer's office was notified that an audit was in the works as early as 2018. That's when the department identified 15 deputies suspected of wrongdoing and began referring deputies to the district attorney for criminal investigation. Since then, Barnes said, none of those deputies has been charged by Spitzer's office.

"I did not call the DA, nor would I be obligated to call the DA," about the results of the internal investigations, Barnes said, adding that Spitzer's office should have been aware of the audit because it "was referenced in many" of the criminal submissions.

Spitzer finds the claims outrageous.

"There was no indication in any way whatsoever that this was a departmentwide audit and that they were looking at really tens of thousands, almost 100,000, cases," said Spitzer, who was elected to the post in January. The general impression within his office was that the individual cases of wrongdoing, which trickled in over a two-year period, were not part of a larger pattern.

"Never with the disclosure that there was a systematic problem or failure within his department that may have implicated ... many more cases," Spitzer said.

Following the publication of the story by the Register, sheriff's department spokeswoman Carrie Braun issued a statement saying, "immediate measures were taken to ensure personnel were educated on policy and procedure for booking evidence." The department had also implemented a new protocol "requiring supervisors to check that all property and evidence has been booked prior to approving any related reports."

As a result of the audits, four deputies have been dismissed, seven have been disciplined and four internal affairs investigations are ongoing, the sheriff said.

However, on Wednesday, Barnes downplayed the results of the two audits, saying continued investigations into missing evidence show that all but "a few remaining pieces" have "always been in our possession." He insisted that the sheriff's department has had custody of all evidence involved in cases that have already been decided by the courts.

Barnes called Sanders' estimate that 9,000 pieces of evidence could be missing "completely embellished and inaccurate."

He says the practice by deputies of first submitting digital evidence — including photos, video and audio recordings — to a crime lab for processing before submitting it to the property and evidence room created the appearance of a delay. "That gap does not mean that evidence was mishandled or treated outside of the law," Barnes said, adding that deputies will no longer be allowed to do that.

Meanwhile, Sanders said it is getting harder to believe that the district attorney's office was oblivious to the internal audits.

"They were referred 15 cases for potential prosecution, so it's not really credible that the sheriff's department was hiding the evidence," he said.

Sanders noted that under Spitzer's predecessor, Tony Rackauckas, there was a history of ignoring questionable behavior within the sheriff's department.

Rackauckas' office was kicked off the largest mass murder case in the county's history in 2015 after Sanders discovered that the sheriff's department, under Barnes, had failed to disclose it was misusing jail informants in violation of inmates' rights.

"They're scrambling like mad right now because in reality they never fixed the problem," Sanders said.

Spitzer argues that he and Sanders are both after the same thing: "Our only focus is to determine with certainty how many cases my office may have prosecuted where the evidence was never booked or it was booked in such a fashion that it calls into question the sanctity of that evidence."

He said a meeting with the sheriff's office has been scheduled for next week to dive into the results of the internal audits.

https://www.npr.org/2019/12/05/785256290/orange-county-sheriffs-kept-evidence-booking-crisis-secret-for-nearly-two-years

DA’s Office Worked to Frame Newport Beach Doctor as Serial Rapist

R. Scott Moxley| Posted onNovember 13, 2019 ocweekly

Image Susan Kang Schroeder in the hot seat: Have you no decency, madam? (Illustration by Federico Medina)

What prompted journalists around the globe to preposterously report in September 2018 that a Newport Beach doctor and his girlfriend had drugged, then videotaped themselves raping 1,000 women?

In July, Susan Kang Schroeder—the media flack for Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas until his defeat in the 2018 election—sat for a sworn Irvine deposition in a related civil case and tried to conjure up explanations to exonerate herself as well as her boss for the lies told about Dr. Grant Robicheaux and Cerissa Riley.

Philip Cohen, Robicheaux’s defense attorney, asked Schroeder if she considered headlines such as “Reality TV Surgeon and His Lover Appear to Have Drugged and Raped Up to a Thousand Women On Camera After Luring Them From Bars and Festivals” had been accurate. 

Even though the Weekly first revealed a year ago that there is no evidence of a single recorded rape, Schroeder stunningly defended the false, sensational report as correct.

Cohen followed up, probing for her rationale.

“Because it was feared [sic] to have drugged, raped up [to a thousand women],” she answered coyly. “It doesn’t say they did in fact.”

Cohen mentioned other misleading reports, including an NBC News article headlined, “California Surgeon, Girlfriend Accused of Rape; Possibly Preyed on More Than a Thousand Victims.”

Schroeder pointed to the word possibly and argued the headline was “not inaccurate.” She then implied it was reasonable to believe there were a thousand victims. She also appeared baffled by the identity of anyone who could have inspired reporters to push the assertion.

But there’s no mystery who sold People v. Robicheaux and Riley as a legitimate bombshell criminal case. Schroeder deleted all of her emails after questions were raised about her conduct. Sadly for her, some records were recovered and proved her office had unambiguously pushed the “thousand victims” line to reporters behind the scenes. 

The guilty here were truly hiding in plain sight. Rackauckas and Schroeder conducted numerous press conferences on the case; produced a 2.5-minute film showcasing the couple’s good looks as a way to demonstrate, as they claimed, that not all monsters are ugly; issued multiple misleading press releases; and repeatedly called everyone from ABC’s Good Morning America to The New York Times to The Howard Stern Show. They even prompted a special episode of Dr. Oz, in which the defendants were convicted on-air as worthy of direct trips to state prison—before there was even a real trial.

The timing of the Rackauckas/Schroeder media blitz wasn’t coincidental. About a month earlier, private professional polling revealed that their hated nemesis, Todd Spitzer, was poised to win an upset victory that would boot them out of office after a scandal-scarred, 20-year stint. Schroeder, who managed her boss’ public image as Mr. Law and Order and served as his de facto campaign manager, needed a miracle that might hit Spitzer with a whammy: winning massive, free pre-election publicity selling Rackauckas as a heroic champion of sexual assault victims in an election when the turnout of female voters was expected to surge. 

Enter sucker-punched victims Robicheaux and Riley, who became forced campaign fodder.

There were obvious signs of hanky-panky in the prosecution from the outset of the case 13 months ago. First, detectives inside the Newport Beach Police Department (NBPD) had thoroughly investigated two 2016 rape complaints against the couple, concluded the accusations were baseless and officially closed the files as non-crimes. It was those complaints that Rackauckas dredged up as genuine and publicized while trying to fight off Spitzer. To help explain away the time gap, the DA put out a September 2018 press release with a timeline of the case that oddly omitted NBPD’s conclusions. 

During a June deposition, Cohen asked Rackauckas to explain the omission.

“I don’t think it’s important,” he replied. “I don’t see the relevancy of it.”

The DA’s timeline was also crafted to make reporters believe that a 2018 cold-case DNA hit on a Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) database had strengthened his prosecution of the couple, an allegation spread around the planet by the media. But here, too, was another glaring, unforgivable doctoring of the record. The vaginal DNA match, which had been collected shortly after one professed victim claimed she’d been raped, wasn’t tied to either Robicheaux or Riley. It belonged to the woman’s boyfriend.

Cohen pressed Rackauckas on this point, too, asking, “Would it be fair to say that the cold-case hit that came back did not strengthen a case against Robicheaux and Riley?”

The chagrined ex-DA replied, “I think that would be fair to say,” but later insisted, “There was no attempt to do any misleading.”

After hours of questions, Rackauckas conceded to Cohen that he’d seen the case as a vehicle for publicity and re-election.

Image Swallowing tainted Rackauckas Kool-Aid: Gulp, gulp, gulp

As the Weekly reported last week, an alarmed Spitzer digested the depositions and wrote a letter to California Attorney General Xavier Becerra accusing Rackauckas and Schroeder of “shamelessly exploiting” the case as a campaign stunt. 

“The former DA and [Schroeder] repeatedly engaged in prosecutorial misconduct by exploiting pretrial publicity for re-election purposes,” Spitzer wrote in a letter unsealed by a judge on Nov. 6. “In doing so, they each further victimized the victims in this case and prohibited the [Orange County district attorney’s] office from exercising its sacrosanct duty to ensure a fair trial and its duty to seek justice.”

The new DA added, “This is not a close call. It is a blatant abuse of power and misuse of government resources for personal gain by the former administration of this office. This office cannot suffer any more credibility setbacks given its history of prosecutorial abuse.”

Officials plan a December criminal court hearing in a mess that should be studied in law schools across the nation as a frightening example of warped, self-serving prosecutors in action.

R. Scott Moxley

CNN-featured investigative reporter R. Scott Moxley has won Journalist of the Year honors at the Los Angeles Press Club; been named Distinguished Journalist of the Year by the LA Society of Professional Journalists; obtained one of the last exclusive prison interviews with Charles Manson disciple Susan Atkins; won inclusion in Jeffrey Toobin’s The Best American Crime Reporting for his coverage of a white supremacist’s senseless murder of a beloved Vietnamese refugee; launched multi-year probes that resulted in the FBI arrests and convictions of the top three ranking members of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department; and gained praise from New York Times Magazine writers for his “herculean job” exposing entrenched Southern California law enforcement corruption.

From <https://www.ocweekly.com/susan-kang-grant-robicheaux/>

History of Anaheim’s Thin Blue Line

[CODE OF SILENCE]

by Voice of OC Aug 8, 2012

Updated Jul 8, 2021

Last month after Anaheim police shot to death an unarmed man in one of the city’s poor barrios — an event that shattered a tenuous trust  between the Latino community and the Police Department — Mayor Tom Tait immediately called for state and federal investigations of the incident.

Tait insisted that the scrutiny is an essential first step in healing the pain of a disenfranchised community. If it is found that the shooting was unjustified, then the officer could face disciplinary action and even criminal prosecution, thus giving residents some measure of justice.

So far, the district attorney, the U.S. attorney’s office, the FBI and the Office of Independent Review have agreed to review the killing of 25-year-old Manuel Diaz, who witnesses said was fleeing from police when he was chased down and shot from behind, then in the head.

But rooting out the truth in these incidents is no easy task, said Steve Nolan, a former Anaheim officer who won a whistle-blower lawsuit against the city in 1997.

Nolan was fired after making allegations of officer brutality against Latinos. He said the current probes of Anaheim police behavior will be hampered by the “code of silence” among officers when one of their own is being investigated.

The officers Nolan accused were cleared of any wrongdoing by an internal review and an FBI investigation, the city asserted in court documents.

Nonetheless, Gregory D. Lee, a former supervisory special agent for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and a criminal justice consultant, said he would not be surprised if investigators encounter the code of silence in their probe.

“I would not doubt there is a code of silence,” Lee said. “No officer wants to be in the situation giving testimony that would result in discipline for another officer. That’s been going on for years.”

And Nolan, now a Corona city councilman, said he is certain that the department hasn’t changed, because Craig Hunter has been promoted to deputy police chief. Nolan said Hunter, then a sergeant, led the cover-up of brutality in the early 1990s.

“The Latino community in Anaheim is going, ‘We don’t trust you [police], we don’t believe you,’ ” Nolan said. “As long as Craig Hunter is there, [Latinos] shouldn’t trust them.”

Hunter declined to comment for this article, saying only that court documents would reveal that Nolan has ulterior motives for his accusations. “He [Nolan] has his agenda,” said Hunter, who has run for Orange County sheriff.

While Hunter’s reference to Nolan’s agenda is unclear, the Los Angeles Times reported that Nolan’s whistle-blower suit had revealed strained relationships between Nolan and other officers as well as Nolan’s personal problems.

Also, Nolan has well-documented financial problems. He filed for bankruptcy last year and was forced to close a restaurant he owned, the Riverside Press-Enterprise reported.

Nolan also unsuccessfully sued Anaheim twice in recent years for disability payments, arguing that the department owed him more money because he was unable to work there and suffered ongoing emotional stress.

And though Lee agrees with Nolan that department secrecy may be an obstacle to investigating the incident, Lee says there are other investigative methods, such as gathering physical evidence, that will aide investigators as they seek to determine what exactly happened.

The Diaz family has ordered an independent autopsy to show in their lawsuit whether Diaz was shot from behind while fleeing, as witnesses attest, or whether he turned around and reached into his waistband, as the city’s police union asserts.

Lee said it will be difficult for officers to refute eyewitness accounts.

“Plus there’s video cameras on police cars, on city streets and everywhere else,” Lee said. “Those are certain, sure-fire ways you can get around [the code of silence].”

Nolan points to another way to ensure that the truth comes out: media attention. “If the people call for justice and the story gets legs, then you’ll probably get a chance with the DOJ [Department of Justice],” Nolan said.

Prosecutions of officer-involved shootings, however, are “extremely rare,” Lee said.

The Nolan Case

In 1991, according to memorandum of points Nolan included in his 2000 lawsuit against the city for disability retirement that followed his whistleblower action, he arrested a 16-year-old robbery suspect named Jorge Alvarado. He then handed Alvarado off to officers Mike Bustamante and John Kelley for the ride downtown, Nolan says.

When Alvarado left the scene with Bustamante and Kelley, Alvarado’s face was clean, but by the time Alvarado got downtown, he “had an injury to his face,” Nolan asserted in the suit. Nolan’s argued that Bustamante, who today is a patrol sergeant, and Kelley, who is retired, had beaten Alvarado en route to the station.

Nolan’s suit goes on to allege that Hunter told Nolan he would handle the situation. But Hunter and another officer who met with Nolan “never conducted any official investigation of the incident, nor did they document any of it, as required by Anaheim Police Department policy,” the suit said.

Soon after the Alvarado incident, Nolan’s suit claims, he saw Hunter and Kelley “unnecessarily hit and kick Jerry Sanchez, another alleged youth gang member.”

Nolan told then Chief Joseph Malloy about what happened, according to the documents. But the chief concluded that the officers involved in the Sanchez incident had done nothing wrong. On Oct. 20, 1992, Malloy issued a memo to all police department employees saying that a complaint made by a member of the department was unsubstantiated, a notice that everybody in the department knew meant Nolan, he argued.

Nolan received his termination notice on Feb. 22, 1993.

Nolan said he received threatening phone calls at his and his father’s home. His wife’s car window was shot through while she was on a drive through Anaheim, he said.

The city argued in court documents that Nolan was fired after a pattern of reprimands, including behavior unbecoming an officer and destroying evidence.

And while the city argued in a 1997 trial brief that internal and FBI investigations found that Nolan’s claims about the officers were unsubstantiated, a county grand jury in 1997 agreed that Nolan’s termination was retaliation for breaking the “code of silence.” Nolan was awarded $340,000, the Los Angeles Times reported.

The Department Today

Nolan and Anaheim Police Chief John Welter have a sharp disagreement over whether the code of silence still exists within the police department.

Nolan said that as long as Hunter is there, he has no doubt the department is the same. “Things that happened in the ’90s will continue to happen until [Hunter] is gone,” Nolan said during a recent interview.

But Welter, who came on board as police chief in 2004 and was unaware of the Nolan case, argued that departments and officers change and that the Anaheim Police Department today is not the same organization it was in the 1990s.

Back then, reports of police brutality were common and the department kept dossiers on Latino leaders that linked them to suspected criminals.

Latino leaders have credited Welter with implementing a community policing approach and opening dialogue with neighborhoods.

“If you think I’m going to start investigating the culture of the ’90s, … I’m not going to,” Welter said. “Cultures change.”

Nolan pointed to the department’s handling of a crowd that gathered after the Diaz shooting to illustrate his contention that the culture hasn’t changed. Police officers confronted by the crowd fired pepper spray balls and bean bags and unleashed a police dog into the crowd, which included women and children.

Welter quickly apologized for the unleashing of the dog, saying it was an accident.

The incident was captured on video and added fuel to many protesters’ rage during a downtown riot that broke out after protesters were denied entrance to an Anaheim City Council meeting.

However, while Welter was apologizing for the dog attack, Anaheim officers were intimidating residents, according to an article in The Orange County Register.

Officers approached residents of Anna Drive, the neighborhood where Diaz was shot, and attempted to persuade them to change their eyewitness accounts of the events, according to the article.

One officer pounded his fist on a table while questioning a resident, according to the article. There were also many reports that officers attempted to buy cell phone video from residents, according to another Register article.

“It appears you’ve got the same police department, the same mentality, the same disrespect for Latinos as back in the day,” Nolan said.

City Manager Bob Wingenroth, the city’s chief bureaucrat in charge of overseeing all city departments, would not comment on the culture of Anaheim police and said he wasn’t familiar with the Nolan case. He would say only that if Nolan has useful information, he should report it to the proper authorities.

Please contact Adam Elmahrek directly at aelmahrek@voiceofoc.org and follow him on Twitter: twitter.com/adamelmahrek.

https://voiceofoc.org/2012/08/history-of-anaheims-thin-blue-line/