In a letter dated Wednesday, April 19, to Acting City Manager City Manager Gerardo Mouet and obtained Thursday by the Register, Rojas noted he had served the city for more than 27 years. He called for the appointment of an acting police chief to “allow for a seamless transition as I separate from the department.”

The action comes amid recent criticism by some City Hall elected officials over a rise in shootings and an ongoing discussion by a sharply divided City Council of the department’s performance and leadership. The November city election, which focused in large part on crime and trends in shootings, reduced Rojas’ support on the council.

Also on Thursday, the Santa Ana Police Officers’ Association announced it was moving forward with a vote of no confidence on Rojas. The police union agreed to proceed with the vote last week, the group’s president, Gerry Serrano, wrote in an email to city officials.

Newly elected Councilman Jose Solorio, who had police union backing in the November election, said in an email to the Register Thursday that “maybe the POA won’t need to do a vote of no confidence.”

Councilman David Benavides, a Rojas ally, expressed gratitude for the chief’s service to the city, beginning as a patrol officer and ending as the city’s first Latino chief.

“I believe he was a strong and effective leader. It’s unfortunate that the police union leadership and its allies on the City Council have made the police chief’s job difficult over the last several months, and I can understand the chief’s decision to go to a place where he might be allowed to be more effective.”

In a statement, Serrano, the police union president, thanked Rojas for his service, adding: “Now we need a Chief with a new problem-solving and community-oriented policing strategy to address the spike in gang shootings and morale at the Santa Ana Police Department.”

The agency was “once recognized as a leader Nationally in Community Oriented Policing,” he said, and “with the right leadership can once again make the city of Santa Ana a safer community for the families, business stakeholders and city employees to work in.”

City police Cpl. Anthony Bertagna said Rojas “is not currently discussing his employment status.”

A source close to the police department said Rojas is expected Friday, April 21, to be named police chief of BART, the Bay Area transit agency. The San Francisco Chronicle, citing multiple sources, reported Thursday that Rojas would be appointed chief of the BART force leading a department with 227 sworn officers.

Mouet said he received the resignation letter Thursday morning and was beginning meetings with personnel officials on a process for selecting an acting police chief. He said he believes there are “a lot of individuals internally” who may seek the job, but the search could be opened to external candidates, as well.

The police union email to city officials on the no-confidence vote, provided to the Register, says the union tabled plans for a no confidence vote more than a year ago, “in fairness, to allow Chief Rojas to address the issues.”

“A year has elapsed and gang shootings are up to historic numbers, mismanagement of resources and the morale at the police department has worsened to near unrecoverable levels,” Serrano wrote. “There has been no change in all of the areas of concern, and as new issues arise, the association has decided it is now time to move forward.”

The new development comes days after council members directed city staff to pursue, at the chief’s urging, what was characterized as a multi-pronged holistic approach, involving community groups, to combat shootings and gang violence.

“Gang prevention is a big challenge for us,” Rojas told the council. “With that comes the increase in shootings we’ve seen.”

“We can’t arrest ourselves out of the problem,” he added.

Mayor Pro Tem Michele Martinez, who had called for Tuesday’s discussion on gang shootings and violence, said she wishes the city could have continued efforts to reduce crime with Rojas.

“We had a good working relationship and appreciated his efforts to change the culture in the [police department] and hold his officers accountable, and his willingness to partner with the community,” Martinez wrote in a text message. “A big loss to the city family.”

There were 55 shootings in the first 50 days of 2016, a five-year high for Orange County’s second-largest city. Shortly afterward, the police department stopped releasing the number of shootings – which include attempted murder, assault with a deadly weapon and firing into an inhabited dwelling or vehicle – citing problems tracking from multiple databases.

Figures released by the police department last month showed shootings in May and June last year exceeded the pace of shootings in the beginning of the year, and that the trend eased before climbing back to about one-per-day in January of this year. More broadly, shootings increased 183 percent from 2013 to 2016 to 292 incidents, according to the report. Many were gang-related

The surge in shootings and the department’s handling of crime data became an issue in the council campaign later in the year, with the police union spending nearly $300,000 to help elect candidates who voiced concerns about the strategies and leadership of the department.

After the election, Rojas’ allies claimed publicly that the union wanted candidates it supported to remove both the former city manager, who agreed to depart in January, and the police chief. Serrano, the police union president, has said such decisions rest with the City Council and his association’s involvement in the campaign wasn’t unusual.

On Thursday, Benavides said that “everything that was suggested, that there were promises made, is all coming to fruition as was said, so it’s difficult to think otherwise.”

He added that it is now “very important for us as a council to provide clear direction to the acting city manager. That focus is the safety of our community, quality of life and that we don’t [fall into] allowing politics to drive decisions of the police department or city.”

In his email, Solorio noted the chief worked many years for Santa Ana “and we are thankful for his service and commitment to our city.”

Rojas was named the 20th Police Chief in May 2014. He served at the rank of corporal, sergeant, commander and deputy chief. Rojas developed the Homeland Security Division after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, according to the city’s website.

Rojas is a Medal of Valor recipient from the United States Customs Service, Santa Ana Police Department and the Federal Bar Association. He has a Master’s Degree in criminal justice from Chapman University and a Bachelor’s degree from California State University, Long Beach.

https://www.ocregister.com/2017/04/20/amid-controversy-over-rise-in-shootings-santa-ana-police-chief-resigns-says-he-has-new-job/

Together nearly six years, the couple had been talking marriage – Trinh had even been saving to buy an engagement ring – but the kind and generous Nguyen was already like part of the family, said Trinh’s brother Haian Trinh, 33.

She was Haisan Trinh’s “first girlfriend, ever,” his brother said Friday as her boyfriend and parents prayed, “and in so many ways was the perfect girl for him.”

Nguyen, 31, who moved to Santa Ana from Vietnam as a child, was one of 14 people killed Wednesday in the mass shooting in San Bernardino. Her friends and family remember her as “an incredible person with a contagious smile” who “had a heart bigger than the sun,” according to a GoFundMe site to help her mother, Van Nguyen, with the memorial costs.

Like the other shooting victims, Tin Nguyen was at a holiday luncheon for the San Bernardino County Department of Public Health, where she worked as a food inspector.

Nguyen long had an interest in health issues, earning her bachelor’s degree in health science in 2010 from Cal State Fullerton.

While studying there, she became the first intern with the Office of Environmental Health and Safety to take and pass a Registered Environmental Health Specialist certification exam, according to Colleen Wilkins, a Cal State Fullerton occupational safety officer.

“She was enthusiastic about life and opportunities before her, and she was dependable and down-to-earth,” Danny H. Kim, associate professor of health science, said in a statement.

That October after Nguyen graduated, Kim received an email from her informing him of her new job with the San Bernardino County Department of Public Health.

Outside of work, her day always started and ended with her boyfriend, his brother said.

Every morning, Nguyen would call Haisan Trinh to wake him up for work and he would call her on his way back home from work, Haian Trinh said.

The two had talked about buying a house somewhere in Orange County together and “she wanted five girls or something,” Haian Trinh said. Nguyen had tried on a wedding dress, and Haisan Trinh was saving up for an engagement ring.

“He had all the intention of doing it,” Haian Trinh said about his brother’s plans to tie the knot. “He just thought he had a little bit more time.”

The pair met at Valley High in Santa Ana, and after going separate ways for college they reconnected. In the nearly six years that they dated, “he has never been mad at her once,” the brother said.

Getting mad at Nguyen seemed almost an impossibility, those who knew her at different points of her life said.

At McFadden Intermediate, Nguyen was soft-spoken – perhaps because of her limited English – but her classmate Phi Luong, 31, recalls being drawn to her because “she was just a very nice person.”

“She just had that personality, you know, that goodness about her,” Luong, of Costa Mesa, said.

The two girls went on to play tennis together at Valley High. Luong, the team captain at the time, said Nguyen was “willing to do anything for everybody.”

“This just literally breaks my heart,” Luong said of the shooting. “Because kids in Santa Ana, people don’t expect a lot from the inner city communities, but I felt that she had a lot to give.”

She was a giving daughter and sister as well.

From working through Adams Elementary, Carr Intermediate, McFadden Intermediate and Valley High School learning English as a second language, Nguyen came to be the sole provider for her mother and older brother at their home in Santa Ana, which she owned.

“She provided everything financially and emotionally,” Haian Trinh said.

One giving memory of Nguyen sticks out in the mind of her seventh-grade science teacher, Erin Sloan, at Carr Intermediate.

As part of the gardening curriculum, Sloan had ordered 20 pounds of worms for his students to learn about feeding them garbage to create compost. The worms were expected to arrive in two weeks, but instead arrived in two days – at the end of the school day Friday.

That worried Sloan, because the worms would die if they weren’t transferred from the packaging to plastic bins with wet newspaper shreds. Nguyen volunteered.

“I thought, ‘that’s incredibly nice,’” Sloan, 57, recounted. “But that was just the way she was.”

On Thursday, when Sloan heard the names of the 14 San Bernardino victims, he realized one was Nguyen – the girl who had sweetly volunteered to transfer worms on a Friday afternoon.

“Another light in the world is out,” Sloan said.

When her boyfriend, Haisan Trinh, a mechanical engineer for Boeing, got wind of the mass shooting Wednesday, he texted her, his brother said. No response.

He “went to every single hospital in the San Bernardino area trying to find her,” Trinh’s brother said. Eventually, Trinh sent another text – to his brother, informing him that Nguyen had died in the carnage.

“I know that she had a surprise for him,” Haian Trinh. “And now, he will never know.”

http://www.ocregister.com/articles/nguyen-694940-trinh-brother.html

“His work was his life,” she said. “That’s what he stood for. He wanted peace.”

On Oct. 11, 1985, the morning after he appeared on local and national television praising Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat as “a man of peace,” Alex Odeh went to his office. As he unlocked and opened the door, a pipe bomb detonated, blowing off his legs.

“The ceiling has dropped. All the windows on the second floor are blown out. There is glass clear across the street. It looked like a tornado hit it,” Greg Lee, an attorney who witnessed the explosion from a building nearby, said in an Orange County Register article published the next day.

Alex Odeh died in surgery 2 1/2 hours after the blast at the age of 41.

Three decades later, one of Orange County’s earliest acts of terrorism remains unsolved. A reward of up to $1 million the FBI announced in 1996 for information leading to any arrests or convictions remains, and Odeh’s family and Anti-Discrimination Committee members are using the anniversary this year to fuel a national movement seeking answers.

“I believe it is the oldest open counter-terrorism investigation we have,” said David Bowdich, assistant director of the FBI’s Los Angeles field office overseeing seven counties. “I’m not aware of anything on this scale that has occurred in Orange County since.”

Helena Odeh was 7 years old when her father died; her sisters, Samya and Susan, were 5 and 1, respectively. Sunday, the 30th anniversary of Alex Odeh’s assassination, his widow, Norma, and Samya will visit his grave – but Helena Odeh will stay home.

“I haven’t gone in years, just because it’s too painful for me,” Helena Odeh, 37, said. “I am the only one of my sisters who remembers my father. His touch, his voice – I’m the only one who remembers that, and when I see his face on the gravestone, it just kills me. It tears me up inside.”

Most of the family still lives in Orange County but didn’t want their city of residence published because of safety concerns.

Alex Odeh was born in the Palestinian village of Jifna and studied engineering at Cairo University in Egypt, but was unable to return home after the Six-Day War. The experience prompted him to pursue a political science degree instead.

He moved to the U.S. in 1972, and when he returned to Jifna three years later, he met and married Norma. They settled in Orange, and he served as a part-time professor of Middle East history and Arabic at Cal State Fullerton and Coastline Community College, while making peaceful relations in the Middle East his life goal.

That goal remains elusive today, and so too does closure in the Odeh case.

Thirty years with no information from the FBI except, “It’s an ongoing investigation,” is a long time for the Odeh family and the Arab-American community, said Lana Kreidie, president of the committee’s Orange County chapter and a criminal defense attorney.

Investigators within a few years of the attack named three Jewish Defense League members as persons of interest, “and then you have crickets,” she said. One of those men, Robert Manning, was later sentenced to prison for the 1980 bombing of a computer company in Manhattan Beach.

“We want transparency from the FBI, we want to know what they’ve done to follow up on these leads,” said Kreidie, who encouraged Helena Odeh to join the local chapter’s board. “We’re not getting any closure.”

Abed Ayoub, legal and policy director for the committee’s national office in Washington, D.C., added: “Sadly, many feel that the life of a Palestinian American is not as valuable as another life. That’s the perception that’s being given, that an Arab life is not worth investigating and not worth taking action on.”

But Bowdich said the FBI has not backed off on its efforts.

“Absolutely it’s a cold case – it’s 30 years old – but that doesn’t mean it’s sitting on a shelf somewhere in a box,” he said on Friday. “As an organization we are very committed to hopefully bringing this case to a solution, apprehending those individuals that were involved.”

Bowdich acknowledged that a working theory is a Jewish extremist group targeted Alex Odeh and “we’re continuing down that path; we’re just looking for that critical link to solve the case.”

In 1997, vandals splattered red paint on a statue honoring Odeh outside of Santa Ana Public Library. That case, considered a hate crime, remains unsolved, too.

The FBI continues to reexamine evidence on the explosion and is looking at “new techniques” to determine if any more evidence can be generated to solve the case, Bowdich said.

“And the reward is out there,” he said. “That has not been rescinded at all.”

Meanwhile, ADC committee members continue pushing for justice for Alex Odeh with new efforts.

Out of Washington, D.C., the national committee and a diverse group of 25 civil and human rights organizations including the NAACP on Friday sent letters urging the U.S. Department of Justice and Congress to rededicate resources to the investigation. On the anniversary Sunday at 9 a.m. they are fronting a #Justice4AlexOdeh Twitter storm.

The committee’s Orange County chapter is holding its annual memorial banquet, themed “Promoting Peace, Defeating Terrorism” this year, on Saturday at the Sheraton Park Hotel at the Anaheim Resort. Guests will participate in a letter-writing drive to defense leaders.

Knowing the FBI continues to pursue her father’s case is important to Helena Odeh.

“It’s been 30 years, and if I have to wait another 30 years to get a little answer, that’s fine,” she said. “I just want some kind of answer. I just want to know why, what was the reason?”

http://www.ocregister.com/articles/odeh-686976-years-alex.html

The 20-year veteran of the Police Department, off-duty and possibly driving while intoxicated, sideswiped a wall near East Josephine Street around 5:30 a.m., McManus said. The sergeant then walked several blocks to a building, where a security guard called police.

“A number of improprieties” were discovered involving a lieutenant, three other sergeants and two officers who responded to the scene, McManus said.

There was an “attempt to take the sergeant home and to remove what could be evidence from his vehicle,” McManus said.

The incident came to the Police Department’s attention through an officer who was present but did not take part and is not being investigated.

The sergeant who crashed the car had worked the night before, and some of his officers responded to the crash, McManus said. Results of blood and urine alcohol-level tests administered later that day were not released.

McManus declined to name the seven involved but said they are not facing charges at this time, pending ongoing criminal and administrative investigations.

“It is in the midstages, and we are moving aggressively forward on both,” he said.

The sergeant has been put on administrative leave, and the six others are on administrative duty.

The car had minor damage. But McManus, known to take a hard stand against DWI, said he is not taking the incident lightly.

“My concern is for the integrity and reputation of the Police Department,” he said.

http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local_news/article/Officers-accused-of-crash-cover-up-3085551.php

A San Antonio police officer who had been on the force for a year and a half, William Karman was trained to shoot when he felt his life was threatened. He found himself in that position, he told a jury Tuesday, when he interrupted what appeared to be an armed robbery.

A man had pinned another man to the ground with a gun, then pointed the gun at Karman and advanced, the officer testified.

“‘San Antonio police, drop the gun'; I know for sure I yelled it three times,” Karman said. “And he didn’t. That is when I fired.”

Time passed “very slow,” Karman said, as he shot two rounds that hit the man in the upper torso and stomach.

The man kept coming, he said, so Karman fired two more rounds, hitting him in each leg, but still the man stepped forward.

After a fifth shot, the man fell.

“He didn’t drop the gun until he hit the ground and it bounced off his hand,” said Karman, 29.

But the final bullet hit the man being robbed, James Lee Whitehead, 45, still on the ground with his hands in the air, prosecutor Miguel Najera said in an opening statement at the murder trial of Jesse Ramon, accused of being the assailant in the robbery.

Whitehead was a female impersonator, but authorities concluded the robbery wasn’t a hate crime. He died later at a hospital.

And though Ramon, 24, didn’t pull the trigger, he was charged under a provision of state law that if someone committing a felony does “something dangerous to a human life and somebody ends up dying, … the person who was committing the felony is guilty of that murder,” Najera said.

Ramon could face up to life in prison if convicted.

Karman was flagged in the 600 block of Ogden near San Antonio College about 3 a.m. Aug. 30, 2009. He saw two men robbing and beating Whitehead, Najera said.

One of the assailants ran to an SUV that Karman had seen driving slowly in the area. Authorities say its occupants were Michael Martinez and Fernando Rodriguez, both 21 at the time, who also face murder charges in Whitehead’s death.

Ramon didn’t flee but pointed his gun at Karman and advanced, said Cynthia Kopecki, a Family Assistance Crisis Team volunteer who was accompanying Karman and watched from his vehicle.

“He looked angry,” Kopecki said. “They were slow in pace, but full steps.”

Defense attorney Richard Langlois did not give an opening statement but will have a chance to later. He asked Karman if he heard gunshots before firing. Karman hadn’t.

If Karman, upon arriving at the scene, “had the opportunity to shoot Ramon to prevent him from shooting (Whitehead),” why didn’t he take it, Langlois asked.

“He was too close. I didn’t want to hit Mr. Whitehead,” Karman said, looking down and shaking his head.

http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local_news/article/Murder-trial-opens-in-robbery-related-shooting-2236292.php

]]> http://kwonglede.com/2011/murder-trial-opens-in-robbery-related-shooting/feed/ 0 http://kwonglede.com/2011/little-noticed-killing-snuffed-out-dream/ http://kwonglede.com/2011/little-noticed-killing-snuffed-out-dream/#comments Mon, 11 Jul 2011 01:52:28 +0000 http://kwonglede.com/?p=464

It took Lorena Smith a decade working as a dancer at strip clubs to get to where she was, close to paying off her mortgage on a home in a gated community and only a couple of courses short of earning a nursing degree.

The single mother had raised two sons and only recently started going out, rewarding herself after three years of strictly studying. As she celebrated this new chapter, a gunman took her life.

“That is the ironic thing,” said her older son, Dorian Dégagé, 21. “She always wanted to search for that American dream. Wanted to show her parents she was independent, that she could succeed in this country.”

Smith, 46, and her date were talking in the parking lot of two bars near U.S. 281 and Bitters Road in the small hours of the morning of May 28 when someone drove up near her vehicle and shot her in the neck.

She died shortly afterward at Brooke Army Medical Center. The killing received only cursory notice by news organizations because it came less than two hours after the high-profile slaying of Bexar County Sheriff’s Sgt. Kenneth Vann.

Area, state and federal law enforcement organizations poured manpower into the Vann case and investigators made an arrest slightly more than a week later. Six weeks after Smith’s death, San Antonio police have no firm suspects.

“There’s going to be another family where a kid loses a mother,” Dégagé said. “For it to be forgotten and become a cold case is something that none of us want.”

Smith, born Lorena Larios in Tequila, Mexico, was the youngest of four children and dreamed of escaping a life of poverty, family members said.

“All she ever wanted was for a prince to find her under a tree and take her to America, and live happily ever after,” Dégagé said.

It was never much of a fairy tale. Smith’s relationship with Dégagé’s father was short-lived. Another American got her into the United States, where her son was born. Later, she came to San Antonio with her first husband and father of her second son, Dillon Smith, now 17.

When her husband stopped working and needed money, he brought her to dance at clubs, family members said.

“She was a stripper because he made her do that,” said her sister, Maria Romisch, 52. Divorced, remarried and divorced again, Smith continued to dance at places like the Wild Zebra. It was a steady income for an immigrant without a college degree.

Despite working most nights of the week in that environment, Smith never drank or partied, Romisch said.

“She would get off at 3 a.m. and there was never a day she would not come and pick up her kids from me and take them to school, so they could go to a better district,” her sister said.

Smith was blunt and had a strong sense of self: It is part of family lore that she once refused to bring a former Spurs player a drink because it was not her job.

“Men would drool for her because she was a gem in a pile of coals,” Dégagé said. “She wasn’t there to get the next rock. She had no other alternative because she wanted to have a future for herself, and she kept to that despite things men would offer.”

Looking back, Dégagé said his mother’s occupation, “as terrible as it was as a job, definitely assisted in what we have now.” He and his brother live in a two-story house Smith had designed and built in Shavano Park. “It was her castle,” he said.

Bob Thornburgh, 46, an aviation electronics technician who knew Smith for 14 years and called her “the best friend I ever had,” urged her to go to school after she developed a condition called Bell’s palsy, which temporarily paralyzed half her face.

In the Surgical Technology Program at St. Philip’s College, Smith was reserved and “struggled but was a fighter” who practiced until she mastered techniques, said a classmate and close friend, Christy Hardin.

Hardin, 37, said Smith was casually seeing a few men at the time she was killed. Her date that night was a man she found on the Internet and was meeting for the first time. Dégagé said she left at midnight, a lot later than usual, and he had a bad feeling about it, but she called him chismoso, a gossip, when he asked for details.

It was her date who called police after running from Smith’s car when she was shot, officers told her family. There were others in the large parking lot.

“I just cannot see how so many people witnessing this happening were not able to give information,” Thornburgh said. “It’s very frustrating for us.”

The killer could have been someone Smith knew, or it could have been a random act of violence like a carjacking, which would make the case harder to crack, said Tom McNelly, an SAPD detective.

“The case has some promise of being solved,” McNelly said. “We do have some leads.”

Crime Stoppers is offering up to $5,000 for information leading to an arrest. Tips can be called in anonymously to 210-224-STOP.

Smith’s sons aren’t getting any of her life insurance because she missed the latest premium payment. Thornburgh will finish paying for their house, which is still decorated with her paintings — images that stuck with her that she attempted to put on canvas — and her collection of Betty Boop memorabilia.

“The character seems like everything that a woman would want to be: strong, independent, kind, generous and beautiful,” Dégagé said. “Very symbolic of her, I think.”