Four months ago, I wrote to you about nailing my Christmas tree crooked to its base. I also wrote about why Inadvertent deserves your support and laid out a plan for what happens when the project receives enough of your support. Today that plan is happening.

I am honored to welcome Katja Schatte as Inadvertent’s inaugural editor. Katja’s thoughtful approach to language and journalism will take the writing and reporting to new heights. I have worked alongside them on some of my most impactful reporting, including stories from the SAPD Gang Series and some of The Blue Hand reporting project.

The editor role, which is on a freelance basis, is funded directly through paid subscriptions. This major step would not be possible without those commitments from supporters.

Here is Katja’s blurb:

Katja is a multilingual (English | Spanish | German) editor, copy editor, translator, and interpreter with a background in history and extensive experience editing academic, technical, and — most enthusiastically — journalistic writing. Katja is also an EMT in a busy 911 system and the parent of an extremely talkative almost-seven-year-old child.

Readers will see an immediate impact from having Katja as an editor here. I’m absolutely thrilled to announce this.

Aside from this development, I just got back from Chicago after being invited by the Online News Association (ONA) to attend their annual conference. I was specifically invited for the work Inadvertent is doing. A huge shoutout to ONA, Project C and the Lenfest Institute for Journalism for the opportunity to attend. This, and analytics, tells me that Inadvertent is drawing an audience outside of the coverage area. It means people around the US, and few outside of it, are hearing about what all goes on around here — and they’re paying attention.

So, we’re going to keep reporting, gumshoeing, muckraking and publishing pieces that hold power to account (only this time we’re doing it with an editor!).

Lastly, hit the upgrade button already. I won’t (I will) ask again.

-BC

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Edit 12:20p: A period and hyphen were added.

Santa Ana officials can’t figure out how to retrieve data captured by Flock’s automated license plate reader (ALPR) system installed last year. Through letters sent to Inadvertent’s counsel, the city attorney’s office revealed that even just one day’s worth of data, which contains tens of thousands of images of Santa Ana residents driving, with location information, a timestamp, and other identifying features, is apparently out of reach to the city and as a result of that, the public. In the letters, the city initially refused to give up information on where they installed the ALPR cameras, despite the cameras being in plain view around the city and fixed onto public infrastructure. However, in a complete reversal last week, the city published a list of intersections where the cameras were installed. This all stems from multiple public records requests seeking information about how the Santa Ana Police Department (SAPD) is using the mass surveillance systems on residents.

In ongoing correspondence, city officials have shifted positions to keep hidden critical information about the ALPR systems. SAPD’s request denials show that Investigations Bureau Commander Gilbert Hernandez is the person responsible for withholding the information. Records previously released show Hernandez helped usher the Flock system into the city, oversaw the installation of the cameras with the public works department and is the point person for the department’s ALPR program. In Hernandez’s initial denial of Flock data, he issued a blanket denial, failing to recognize a California Supreme Court ruling stating that ALPR data is a disclosable public record. It is unclear whether he consulted an attorney when making the determination and the city has previously refused to disclose what the role of the city attorney’s office is when the city makes determinations on public records requests.

After the blanket denial, the city said that Flock’s system is incapable of retrieving images it captures – which makes the city incapable of producing the records it’s obligated to produce. At the same time, Flock’s website contains instructions for its customers who need to retrieve data from its servers. The city attorney’s office and SAPD made no mention of these instructions at first and it’s unclear if they were aware of them.

Inadvertent also requested the locations of the cameras. As of last week, the city published the locations where they installed the systems on the street. This fully walked back every reason they previously gave for denying to give that exact information. After Hernandez withheld the information, citing an intelligence or security protocol exemption, the city later said the reason they did not want to share it was because “potential suspects” could avoid the cameras. Weston Rowland, Inadvertent’s attorney, then explained to the city that this reason failed to justify legally withholding the location information. Santa Ana officials then said that the city is considering “rolling out a program similar to the City of Costa Mesa,” which contains a list of camera locations and links to a page on Flock’s website listing how Costa Mesa uses the system and who they share data with.

SAPD Public Information Officer Natalie Garcia said, “The Chief initiated the ALPR transparency page to keep the community informed and increase transparency.”

Beyond the location information, the letters from Rowland forced the city to produce two redacted images taken on an ALPR system. The images show a full street scene, not just a license plate. They illustrate the powerful nature of ALPR systems, which mass-collect data on any person who comes across them. Travel direction, bumper stickers, location, anything in plain sight, are captured and then stored on Flock and Motorola’s databases for one year and five years, respectively. In aggregate, the data captured by the systems provide a near-complete portrait of someone’s life: where they may work, where they may drop their kids off, who they see, where they park at night – all centralized and available to any police or government agency with access to the databases.

All of this data is also being used to train Flock’s artificial intelligence (AI), according to reporting by WIRED. The reporting states that Flock’s AI detects license plates, vehicles and people automatically, including what clothes they wear. It goes on to state, “...a Flock patent also mentions cameras detecting ‘race’.”

The withholding of information is nothing new for the city, neither is paying taxpayer money for improperly withholding disclosable public records, yet the arguments they present, according to Rowland’s letters, are legally insufficient and could result in a lawsuit.

Cities across the US are canceling their contracts, and advocates in Santa Ana are also organizing to reach the same outcome in the city. Tanya Navarro, Organizing Director at Chispa said, “The only way to ensure this data is not abused or misused is to not collect it in the first place…at least 30 localities have deactivated their Flock cameras or ended their Flock contracts in an effort to protect their residents from predatory data sharing. We should be next.”

Last year, reporting from CalMatters revealed that the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) and the Orange County Sheriff’s Department were illegally sharing their Flock data with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). SAPD and Santa Ana city officials have said that the city is not engaging in the same illegal practice.

Edit 3/16/2026, 1:52PM: The second image was changed due to a screenshot error. A word in the first paragraph was removed to make a sentence more concise. No substantial changes.

Major update, 2/3/2025, 10:17PM: In a 4-3 split vote, the council voted to purchase the Skydio drones.

In the near future when Santa Ana residents look up and see the police department’s drones flying overhead, they will be looking at the same type of drone that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) used against Palestinians in Gaza at the start of the genocide. That’s if the city council tonight votes in favor of purchasing the Skydio drones listed on the staff report slated for the council’s consideration. Skydio, a Silicon Valley-based drone manufacturer and Israeli-genocide profiteer has partnered with Axon, a body-worn camera manufacturer and Israeli-apartheid profiteer, to mass distribute its drones to police across the US, federal agencies including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and military. It is no secret that American weapons and technology have enabled Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, however, the Santa Ana Police Department’s (SAPD) move to purchase Skydio’s X10 drones is a clear example of the imperial boomerang completing yet another arc: ensuring the war comes home.

In 2023, Skydio sent the IDF over one-hundred drones at the start of the genocide. The company’s artificial intelligence (AI) system that powers the drones was then trained and refined on Palestinians during the onslaught that followed, according to reports. SAPD is now taking steps to deploy that same system in Santa Ana. The drones are capable of autonomous flights, feature thermal cameras and are connected to Axon’s centralized database called Axon Evidence. They can track and follow a person or car moving through a city. During the genocide in Gaza, the IDF used the drones for reconnaissance and mapping structures. According to a report, Skydio maintains an office in Israel and is partnered with Israeli company DefenSync to continue selling to the IDF.

ICE also purchased Skydio drones in 2025 and 2024 through another of Skydio’s partners, Atlantic Diving Supply. Since at least 2021, ICE has purchased X10D drones, a military variant of the X10 SAPD wants to bring to Santa Ana.

One of Skydio’s other military drones, the RQ-28A, has already been trained with the US military to drop live grenades from it. In a podcast interview, Skydio CEO and co-founder Adam Bry was asked, “Can you put a gun on that thing?”

Bry laughed and responded, “Well, in the US it is illegal to put any kind of weapon on a drone and fly it in civilian airspace. But you should talk to our friends at Axon about the possibility of putting a taser on it.”

Skydio spokesperson Annie Aleman stated that the company has no comment at this time.

The staff report submitted to council by SAPD Chief Robert Rodriguez, states that the drones will be used to implement a new program: Drone as a First Responder (DFR). The report reads, “The research conducted…concluded that integrating Axon’s [DFR] system with Skydio X10 drones will improve the Department’s ability to serve the community by leveraging modern, commonly used drone technology. The DFR system will enable the Police Department to respond…by deploying strategically placed, dock-based drones throughout the city. The strategically placed drones will directly benefit the community by providing expedited call-for-service response times and gathering critical real-time information about the incident as it develops.”

The staff report also states that SAPD formed a drone committee to determine which drone system the department should pursue.

DFR is marketed as a way to reduce 911 response times and keep physical confrontations from happening, it is one of the latest trends in policing programs. However, the tech build up in cities across the US — at the hands of police and police foundations — that enables DFR and other surveillance operations, and the tech companies’ partnerships with each other, signal a powerful surveillance state that underlies any message from a local police department saying the drones are to combat “illegal fireworks.”

There is no indication that the drones requested by SAPD will be used to directly harm residents, but the proliferation of Skydio’s drones throughout the US has resulted in the erosion of Americans’ privacy. Bry stated that the company will be doing “close to 100,00 flights per month” by the end of 2025. Paired with the buildup of Flock Safety’s automated license plate reader infrastructure throughout the US, police and federal agencies are handing Americans’ data and personal identifying information to private tech companies And ICE is using that to surveil people.

Just last summer, Skydio drones were used to spy on the public protesting against the Trump regime at “No Kings Day” in June. In 2024, the drones were used to spy on anti-war protests at college campuses including Yale.

It is unclear if SAPD is aware of Skydio and Axon’s connections to the Israeli-genocide and apartheid system. It is not mentioned in the staff report and SAPD Public Information Officer Natalie Garcia did not directly respond to questions about that or other issues about the drones. Garcia stated that due to the “operational tempo” of SAPD, they cannot respond by publishing time.

Santa Ana Mayor Valerie Amezcua and council members Thai Viet Phan, Phil Bacerra, David Penaloza, Ben Vazquez and Jessie Lopez did not respond to repeated requests for comment.1

Council member Johnathan Hernandez stated that he is concerned about the technology used in a genocide coming to Santa Ana.

Bry, Skydio’s CEO and co-founder, said in the podcast interview that he began his journey wanting to be the best remote-controlled plane pilot when he was a child. This evolved as technology progressed. He is now one of the faces of a rapidly expanding company that has been backed by Israeli-tied private equity and Axon itself. One of its top clients is the US Department of Defense.

“I’ve been working on this stuff since I was a little kid and I want to be working on it for the rest of my life,” said Bry, “I don’t be a part of building this kind of dystopian future where we’ve got drones following us around all the time.”

The podcast host responded, “I get the privacy concern, I don’t want to pretend like it’s not there. I mean look, if there was a drone flying around my house every day, I’d be like ‘what the f—’, I would shoot it down.”

Edit 2/4/2026: The footnote was edited.

I nailed the Christmas tree crooked to its base. It’s tilted about ten degrees instead of standing straight. It is the first time that the home I live in has a real tree, so coming home to the smell of a Douglas fir – the crisp, forest-y sweet citrus that hangs in the air while you walk in the woods the day after rain – has been a new experience to me.

As I nailed the tree to the base last week, I smashed my thumb with the hammer. It is still bruised but getting better. Up until that moment, I was quite confident in my hammer-swinging that I paid no attention to the tilt I was giving the tree. It could have also been karma because I had just finished making a blasphemous joke about the hammering of nails and that being the last thing someone heard many, many years ago. So far, the six-inch nails seem to hold and the tree is secure, so I think it’ll be fine. Still, there’s no excuse: I know to check my work, just like I do in my reporting, so next year, I’ll swing the hammer with more intention and care. Or just get a different type of base (and not make jokes like that?)

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The tree was twelve dollars from Costco, and I don’t have a membership but my friend let me use his to get in. It was a rat race in there.

For half of the cost of my tree, you can have a membership of sorts to Inadvertent. However, you don’t have to wait in terribly long lines (you are always first), you don’t have to fight for parking (Substack has no cars), your free samples are just the full product and not samples, and while I don’t have pizza to give you, I could plan a social at a pizza parlor for new paid subscribers sometime next year.

From today until January 26th, all new monthly subscriptions are six dollars. If all current free subscribers pledged six dollars, Inadvertent would be a part-time operation for an editor and myself. I recognize that it is almost impossible that all of you who open this email are compelled to upgrade your subscription, so here are some smaller goalposts that I am aiming for:

1. Doubling the amount of paid subscribers means I can pay an editor on a freelance basis to work their magic on my writing. It means the writing and reporting will be clearer, more cohesive and overall, a better read. This is the lowest bar I am aiming for.

2. With triple the amount of paid subscribers (just about 100), I can pay other reporters for any of their work published on Inadvertent, so long as the article does not surpass 800 words. You may have already seen some of Abraham Márquez’s bylines on Inadvertent, I would love to compensate him and other writers for their labor. This would bring more voices to the project (so it’s not just me yapping at you).

3. With 120 paid subscribers, it becomes possible to commission work from a graphic designer to make the reporting (and the publication itself) stand out. Right now, I am just limited to my own photography and my mediocre Canva skills.

So, those are some short-term goals, and if you’re still on the fence, here are a bunch of reasons why Inadvertent already deserves your six dollars each month:

• The No Secret Police Database ensures we know precisely who is a cop at the Santa Ana Police Department. More agencies’ records are being processed to be added to the database.

• A breaking story about the city of Glendale’s contract with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) forced Glendale to stop holding people taken by ICE in its city jail. Inadvertent published before the LA Times and an editor there refused to make any mention of mine and Jayrol San Jose’s work. Also our visuals were much better than the LA Times’ piece. Just this morning, Prison Policy Initiative included this article in their 2025 list of “favorite journalism about the criminal legal system.”

• Reporting on surveillance technology (Flock or other automated license plate reader systems).

• Consistent pressure on city officials to release otherwise-confidential records.

• SAPD’s withholding of ICE data (the impact of this story led to proposed policy changes that were struck down by pressure from Trump-appointed US Attorney Bilal Essayli).

• A silly cease and desist from the Santa Ana Police Officer’s Association’s (SAPOA) attorney Michael McGill and the subsequent statement that the association put out because I asked some cops some questions. Strange coming from an attorney who was sued for fraud and malpractice at his now-defunct former law firm, and a police association president that had some concerning allegations against him.

• A de facto ban on my reporting in the Santa Ana community’s largest Facebook group ran by the mayor’s biggest booster.

The list goes on, but I want to wrap this up.

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Inadvertent was started as a way to have complete autonomy in my reporting. Just over a year ago on October 3, 2024, I set out to create space in local news for journalism that holds power to account. I do not come from a traditional newsroom, but that is partly, and sometimes precisely, why you might read Inadvertent. This type of reporting had largely been missing in the local presses for years now. What started as a simple newsletter with just over one hundred subscribers has grown into an outlet that does not pull its punches, and has never been funded by the SAPOA (I am referring to the OC Independent having received at least $10,000 in seed funding from the cop association) or other special interest groups. Inadvertent is beholden only to the truth.

Lastly, I want to share that a couple of months ago, I interviewed for a position with the Orange County Register’s investigative team. I did so as a last ditch effort to find some stability within the journalism industry and perhaps get some experience within a traditional newsroom. I did not receive a callback, but I feel I dodged a bullet that took aim at everything that I have built so far. The hedge fund-owned paper has an exclusivity directive that would have prevented me from reporting on anything that I currently report on unless it was to be published on the Register. It means I would have had to let go of: this project, the newsroom I co-founded, my freelance work with other outlets, the award-winning production team I co-founded and only write what the OC Register would have me write. All for only $24-$28 an hour.

Frankly, it felt like a betrayal to you and myself. I know my worth. And I don’t think I would have flourished in a place that is owned by venture capitalists.

So, support local independent journalism. Support this project. Become a paid subscriber and send a tip my way.

See you in 2026. Thank you.

-Ben Camacho

multi-award winning journalist, documentary photographer, producer

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Updated 1/23/2026, 10:30AM: By way of city council vote, the city of Santa Ana has moved towards appealing the jury’s decision in the case. The case will continue in the California Court of Appeals.

Update 12/16/2025, 12:15PM: A statement from the city sent today was added.

Update 12/18/2025 3:50PM: Valentin’s cooperation agreement is here.

A jury unanimously found that the city of Santa Ana retaliated against Rita Ramirez for her refusal to participate in the Santa Ana Police Department’s (SAPD) gang-like loyalty tests and for speaking up about the misogynistic treatment of women during her time as the highest ranking civilian employee at the police department. The jury also unanimously found that the city failed to take steps to correct misconduct by current and former SAPD top brass. Last Friday, the court awarded Ramirez $2.9 million in damages stemming from the retaliation that ultimately pushed Ramirez out of her job as the Police Administrative Manager.

The jury’s decision marked the end of a trial that lasted over a month, which came after the three year long civil lawsuit Ramirez filed on October 21, 2022 in the Orange County Superior Court. The trial was held at the North Justice Center in Fullerton and was overseen by Judge Nathan Vu. At trial, Ramirez was represented by Lawrence Lennemann and John Barber. The city was represented by Seymour Everett and Kevin Hernandez. The case was one of several pending against the city of Santa Ana filed by current and former SAPD officers that also allege retaliation, harassment or other workplace-related claims. Ramirez’s was the first of cases brought forth in recent years from current and former SAPD employees that reached trial. At least six other cases are currently pending. SAPD’s misconduct and the subsequent $2.9 million court award to Ramirez is one of the highest liabilities tied to SAPD – all while the city approaches a fiscal cliff in 2029.

Barber, who was authorized to speak on Ramirez’s behalf, stated, “She feels deeply vindicated and overjoyed that there’s been formal recognition of what she endured.”

He added that Ramirez hopes that the verdict “serves as a wake up call to the city of Santa Ana to correct the endemic, systemic problems that they have, to this day, failed to address.”

Lennemann, who is also working on some of the pending cases, added that he hopes the city will “address and remedy issues of discrimination, retaliation and harassment that are brought to them.”

City spokesperson Paul Eakins stated that the city has no comment at this time. City spokesperson Paul Eakins sent this statement: “We acknowledge the jury’s verdict in the civil case. The City will work closely with its insurance carriers and outside special counsel team to determine the best course of action with a focus on both fiscal responsibility and fairness and justice. The City remains committed to a safe, healthy, and positive working environment for all of our City employees.”

SAPD Public Information Officer Natalie Garcia did not respond to a request for comment. Specifically, Garcia did not answer questions regarding: if SAPD is concerned about the ruling or misconduct by its members, and if the department is learning anything from the outcome of the Ramirez case.

SAPD’s Gang-Like Activity On Trial

Ramirez’s lawsuit detailed how her refusal to “pick a camp” – a reference to the then-ongoing power struggle within SAPD – led to then-Chief David Valentin retaliating through his loyalists and ultimately pushed her out of the department. Ramirez testified that at a weekly meeting she had with Valentin while they were on good terms still, Valentin would talk a lot about loyalty. She said that she was not sure what he meant by it, but understood, “If I didn’t agree with him in the future, I have to be loyal.”

Testimony from her later detailed a conversation she had where she was told that if she did not pick a side, she would end up “at the bottom of the hill.” Ramirez’s job duties were also taken from her in the midst of the faction feud. Towards the end of her career, she stated that an interaction with Valentin resulted with him saying to her, “You’re still here?”

At the trial, testimony from Valentin, current-Chief Robert Rodriguez, former Deputy Chief Jose Gonzalez, Commander Maria Lopez and others proved to the jury to be, literally, unbelievable. When Ramirez’s attorneys asked key questions, most either denied the accusations or could not remember specific details about the claims made by Ramirez, Inadvertent observed. Almost every other answer given by these witnesses was given in the affirmative or without hesitation. At the end of the trial, Deputy Chief Julian Rodriguez was called to the stand and, Ramirez’s attorneys stated, refuted the testimony offered by the city’s side.

Notable testimony revolved around the fallout of a misogynistic comment regarding officers virtually attending a Women Leaders in Law Enforcement (WLILE) conference in 2020, a command staff retreat that occurred in 2024, and a dinner in Brea between Ramirez, Gonzalez and Rodriguez.

According to court records and testimony, a group of officers gathered at a residence to attend the WLILE conference virtually. Upon learning this, then-Deputy Chief Enrique Esparza referred to the gathering as a “pajama party”, according to records and testimony, due to the officers all being women. After a memo was submitted by Ramirez about the issues women in the department were facing such as condescending behavior, double standards regarding tone, verbiage and demeanor, a consultant was hired by the city. According to testimony, the consultant never finished their work due to interference from Valentin. Valentin, in his testimony, said he did not interfere.

Valentin did not respond to requests for comment.

The command staff retreat was organized by Rodriguez to try and repair relationships between SAPD command staff in the wake of Valentin retiring and the divisions present in the department. In his opening argument, Everett, the city’s lawyer, described it as a “team building event.” In the same morning, Everett admitted that there are “cliques” at the department. When Gonzalez testified, Ramirez’s counsel asked him if “camps” existed within the department and whether that was discussed at the retreat. He flatly denied it. Gonzalez testified virtually from an office and is now the deputy chief in Goodyear, Arizona.

The dinner between Ramirez, Gonzalez and Rodriguez followed a pattern of Ramirez being asked to pick a faction within the department. The dinner happened at Cha Cha’s Latin Kitchen in Brea. At the dinner, Ramirez testified that Gonzalez and Rodriguez told her that she needed to “pick a camp.”

She still refused, despite the mounting pressure that she felt, according to her.

While Valentin was on the stand, Barber revealed that Valentin, who retired in October 2023, has a contract with the city that gives him $300 per hour to cooperate in the ongoing cases. The contract is not listed on the city’s public documents portal. Barber revealed that an amendment to the contract was made specifically for Ramirez’s case, where his hourly rate for cooperation was increased to $350 per hour. On the stand, Valentin stated he had not billed the city for any time yet. At first, Everett, the city’s attorney, objected to Valentin’s cooperation agreement being brought up. Later, however, Everett made it a point to ask Valentin if he knew if it was common for other employees to have similar contracts in place after retirement, to which Valentin was not sure about.

Ramirez’s lawsuit came after Inadvertent reported on SAPD’s gang-like group: the now-defunct Major Enforcement Team (MET). MET was an exclusive SAPD unit, created and used by then-Chief Valentin, who shared gang-like skull tattoos and have been the subject to complaints of alleged misconduct both off and on duty but faced no discipline, according to police records and sources within the department. The unit was formed on January 6, 2020 and consisted of Valentin’s loyalists, including then-Sergeant, now-Commander Oscar Lizardi.

MET was disbanded in 2024 but most officers who participated in the gang-like activities remain in the department, including then-Commander, now-Chief Rodriguez. During his time as Internal Affairs Commander, Rodriguez delayed the investigation of a child sexual assault by MET members and shielded them from investigation and potential prosecution, according to a complaint submitted by SAPD Commander Manuel Moreno. The complaint has since been investigated by a city-hired investigator but the findings have been withheld by the city. Moreno has his own civil case pending against the city.

“There’s really a divisive police department…I’m really worried about the morale and the culture of our department,” said council member Ben Vazquez in a brief interview on Tuesday. He added that he was worried that the issues presented in Ramirez’s case have not been corrected and are being covered up and that SAPD needs strong oversight.

Council member Jessie Lopez stated, “I think that anytime there’s a judgement entered against the city that is a final judgement, there is a learning opportunity for city staff and for the city. And if it wasn’t, that would be a missed opportunity.”

“There’s something obviously not correct within the department, with the divisions that exist within the department,” Lopez added.

Council member Johnathan Hernandez said, “This is a department that has eroded the public’s trust by continuously engaging in misconduct, by killing unarmed members of the community, by covering each other’s crimes. This in turn has created a culture where the very people tasked to create safety for the residents of Santa Ana have turned on each other.”

Hernandez added, “This is something that adversely is going to affect the city’s finances and I have to acknowledge that the city is in a very difficult position amidst a potential budget shortfall in 2030. And I believe that we are in a position of financial constraint due to the ongoing cases of the Santa Ana Police Department.”

Mayor Valerie Amezcua and council members Thai Viet Phan, David Penaloza and Phil Bacerra did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

The Plaintiff

Ramirez is 58. She is of Mexican and Irish descent and grew up in Highland Park, a Los Angeles neighborhood – long before gentrification put chic boutiques and hipster bars on the main drag. In her youth, her job was delivering newspapers where she made seven dollars a month. She was raised by a single mom and married her first husband at 17. In her testimony, she said that she joined the police department at nineteen to help people after seeing abuse in her younger years, she wanted to “serve the community that maybe had the same rough life that [she] had.”

She had her first daughter at 27. On the first day of trial, Barber began his opening argument where he stated that when she was still at SAPD, she was “confronted with unethical and illegal behavior” that she resisted. It was not long into that when Ramirez began to sob and her daughter reached over to her and caressed her shoulder. Moments like that happened occasionally during the trial, but there were far more instances where Ramirez shook her head at testimony being given by the city’s witnesses.

At the end of it all, a jury of her peers did not find them credible and unanimously decided that the city of Santa Ana and its scandal-ridden police department retaliated against her.

Edit 12/10/25 9:27 AM : Title attribution and quote attribution were added.

Edit 12/11/25 2:59 PM: Two typos were corrected.

This project is being co-published with CALÓ News.

Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) officer Nathaniel Beck exited his vehicle and charged across Broadway Avenue, baton in one hand and a .45-caliber Smith & Wesson in the other, toward the parking lots on 86th Place, where a block party had spilled into the early hours of June 3, 2020. He shot five times towards the crowds of partygoers, who had already been shaken up by another shooting about 6 minutes before LAPD showed up to the dimly lit neighborhood-adjacent lots. Beck, part of LAPD’s Community Safety Partnership (CSP), later struggled to keep his story straight during interviews with the department’s Force Investigation Division (FID) about who or what he shot at. Southeast Division detectives assigned to the incident circumvented any court oversight of a search warrant used to investigate a shooting victim and made the warrant untraceable.

LAPD made no mention of CSP’s connection to the shooting in early public messaging about the incident, despite the involved officers having intimate knowledge about the neighborhood — its gangs, its layout, its culture and people – through their work in the program. At the same time, CSP sat on the verge of becoming its own bureau, a move that would establish the community policing program as a core element of LAPD’s organizational structure. CSP’s connection to the shooting was never publicly mentioned until Inadvertent obtained records about the incident almost four years later through a lawsuit.

At the time of the shooting, LA was in the midst of a nationwide racial reckoning – the powder keg of racial injustice in the U.S. had once again been lit by police ultraviolence.

But before LAPD showed up to the party where the incident began, before the bullets flew, and before the fights broke out that night, it was June 2 in South Central Los Angeles, also known as Hood Day to the 62 (Six-Deuce) East Coast Neighborhood Crips.

In LA, Hood Day is a celebration. “It’s like a holiday for the hood,” said Jermaine Welch. “Get together, it’s a festival, just to see another homie that either just got out or either he got a job or he doing good, just to see another homie another year, because…what comes with the gang banging is you lose homies, so every year we celebrate the homies that we lost as well.”

Welch, 39 at the time, is a college graduate and former longtime member of Eastside East Coast Crips 76 Place Locs. He was in the parking lots that night on a marijuana delivery run when he found himself in one of several fights that broke out. Welch managed to get away from the crowd and into his car, a grey 2018 Dodge Charger. According to surveillance footage released through a separate lawsuit, he drove out of the south parking lot and turned left onto 86th Place towards Broadway Avenue when an unknown individual ran up to his car and shot him multiple times. Others joined in shooting at Welch as he drove away. He was hit six times: three times in his left hand, one time each in his chest, his face, and his back.

According to Welch, he took the nearby 110 South on-ramp while he was bleeding and beginning to lose consciousness and exited on Imperial Highway. Surveillance footage from a nearby gas station shows Welch stopped at a red light behind two Los Angeles Sheriff deputies. Welch stated that he flagged them down and told them he needed medical aid. The footage shows deputies pulling Welch out of his vehicle. LAPD records state that a radio call about a shooting victim came in at that time. Welch stated that the last thing he remembered was being on the ground with a deputy manipulating his thumb to unlock his phone.

“So I start asking, what are you doing, man? I’m shot. I’m bleeding and dying here and you’re treating me like a criminal,” Welch said during an interview.

Moments later, a neighbor called 911 to report the shooting. “There’s a lot of shooting going on,” said the unnamed, concerned Angeleno.

“Is it shooting or fireworks?” LAPD dispatch responded.

“No, they’re shooting, it’s going cling, cling, cling, cling, cling, cling, cling – because people are screaming,” said the resident.

When the report of this first shooting came in, Beck and his unit had been waiting at a red light on Broadway and Manchester Avenue, a block away from the party-now-shooting scene. They had been called back from the protests in Hollywood and were heading to a donut shop, according to LAPD records.

“That’s right here,” stated LAPD Officer Francis Coughlin, also part of CSP, as the dispatch alert about the shooting came through, according to FID interview transcripts. Officer Jeffrey Joyce, who was driving them that night, then made a right turn onto Broadway Avenue heading towards 86th Place.

According to his interview with LAPD detectives, Beck knew that this area was a “Hoover stronghold,” a reference to a nearby gang and their prominence in the area, and that there was an “ongoing rivalry” between some of the local gangs there. Coughlin had also been “working this area for twenty-five years,” according to his interview with LAPD detectives. Both were in the same car stopped at the intersection.

Both had their share of uses of force and police shootings prior to this incident and the CSP Bureau’s inception. And, according to department rosters, both are still assigned to CSP.

On July 28, 2020, about 7 weeks after the shooting, the CSP Bureau was announced. It primarily operates in the housing projects of the city of L.A. LAPD has been able to create a positive image of the bureau by organizing regular community events at the housing projects and largely avoiding coverage critical of the program. As a result, CSP’s involvement in the party shootout has flown under the radar. At the L.A. police commission’s meeting immediately after the shootout, the incident, and much less CSP’s role, was never mentioned. Buried in the FID interview transcripts that LAPD released in the lawsuit were sparse references to the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles (HACLA) and CSP.

Four years and two lawsuits later, LAPD was forced to comply with state law mandating disclosure of records pertaining to police shootings. Hundreds of records, including body worn camera footage, surveillance footage, property logs, investigative reports and officers’ FID interview transcripts showing how LAPD investigates its own uses of force, were disclosed. The scope of the records released appears to be one of LAPD’s largest disclosures of records pertaining to one incident, according to the city’s public records request portal. The records reveal key details about the incident that never made it to the public, and put into light the type of policing CSP officers take part in when the news cycle moves on.

LAPD’s Public Relations Efforts Obfuscated CSP’s Role In Shootout

In the weeks after the CSP Bureau’s formation, Deputy Chief Emada Tingirides had been generating buzz about the program in local media. The bureau’s inception came with a promotion for Tingirides – from captain to deputy chief and head of the bureau, all handed to her from then-Chief Michel Moore. She became the second Black woman in LAPD history to reach the rank of deputy chief.

In the media, neither reporters nor Tingirides brought up the shooting, despite CSP officers being involved and it happening near the Avalon Gardens housing project, a HACLA and CSP location. Missing from all of the relevant reporting about CSP at the time of it becoming a bureau was that an officer assigned to what was LAPD’s newest, shining example of community policing got into a shooting with residents at a neighborhood block party.

Had the public known this before, what would they have said about CSP, as it sat on the verge of becoming its own bureau?

Tingirides did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

The Community Safety Partnership began about 15 years ago under Chief Charlie Beck. In 2020, the Los Angeles Times reported that around the time of CSP’s inception, Chief Beck became aware of Tingirides’ community policing strategy that involved bringing police into schools to read to children. Tingirides lauded the CSP concept as “not just a police concept,” but as a way for the LAPD to address police violence.

Dr. Melina Abdullah, a professor at Cal State LA and co-founder of the Black Lives Matter LA chapter, stated in a phone interview: “If you talk about ‘community public safety’, that should begin with community, not police.”

She added that LAPD elevating CSP to a bureau and knowing about the incident, confirmed what she says people already know: “that the LAPD is an absolute, untrustworthy, lying organization with a history of lying, or current practice of lying.”

LAPD Media Relations Division stated that they are unable to say anything beyond what is in the reports released to Inadvertent and that they “do not have additional details regarding…the timing of the Community Safety Partnership’s involvement being disclosed.”

LAPD also said that the chief of police is made aware of incidents via a “chain of command that begins with the command staff from the bureau of occurrence.” LAPD did not answer a question about how soon Moore knew about the incident.

Moore did not respond to a request for comment.

Dontavis Marshall, who Officer Beck shot in the face that night, summed up his experience as he bled on the ground while LAPD arrested him: “This is exactly why there’s a gang of protests going on.”

In LAPD records, the June 3, 2020 shooting is documented as “FID 025-20,” a single incident that largely received coverage typical of television news networks. Newscasts on Fox 11 and KTLA that have historically shaped the public’s perception of L.A. south of the 10 freeway offered narratives such as: A shooting happened in South Central L.A.; LAPD responded; people have been arrested. News crews did not interview any witnesses and relied on LAPD for information.

Weeks after the incident, LAPD uploaded a critical incident video to their YouTube channel. Dubbed by the police commission as an effort to create “transparency” and “[foster] greater public trust,” critical incident videos are typically the first sources that the public has access to when looking for more information on police shootings beyond a press release. They feature body-worn camera footage, 911 call audio, mugshots, and a narrative read by an LAPD officer. CSP was not mentioned in the critical incident video pertaining to the shooting.

“This was what Los Angeles does, which is try to create an image of ‘gentle policing’, when in actuality all policing – but especially policing in Los Angeles – is absolutely brutal,” Abdullah added.

LAPD recounted moments from the shooting in the critical incident video but left out key information: Beck and at least five other individuals on 86th Place were having a shootout, and LAPD quietly let those shooters slip right past them moments later. Analysis of the footage, which included finding the correct timestamp on LAPD’s footage to be able to compare different angles of the events as they actually happened, made apparent why none of the other cops joined in shooting at the partygoers, despite all saying they heard bullets impacting a rollup door behind them upon approaching the scene: Shooting back would have meant shooting into a crowd and a neighborhood.

The same neighborhood where the resident who called 911 in the first place lived.

Despite all of that, Beck charged on and shot five times at a target that he struggled to describe consistently in various instances. His first description, primarily focused on what the target was wearing, was a male wearing a white shirt and a gold chain. His second description: a male wearing a blue shirt and a hat. Then, in interviews with detectives from LAPD’s Force Investigation Division (FID), Beck first said he could clearly see his target. But in his second description he said he was not able to see him. When describing the scene a third time, he mentioned it being “dark.” Ultimately, he, again, said he was able to clearly see him.

Minutes after the shooting Sergeant Paul Rodriguez asked Beck: “Who are the suspects that you got into a shooting with?”

Beck never answered the question but after a short silence said, “Honestly, sir, I was– they were firing over this way,” as he gestured with his hand in a right to left motion.

Other officers interviewed by FID could not specify who or what Beck was shooting at.

Beck did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

LAPD’s Inconclusive Investigation Revealed Through Records Released

Analysis of the records provides rare transparency into how LAPD investigates its own uses of force, including deadly force.

The FID interview transcripts show how FID detectives look at inconsistencies in other officers’ stories about uses of force. In Beck’s second interview with FID, which was much shorter than the first one and happened ten days after Firearms Analysis Unit’s (FAU) bullet analysis issued a report concluding that Beck’s bullet was pulled out of Marshall’s face, FID Detective Macchiarella stated that he had “asked to conduct this second interview just regarding some things [he needed] some clarity on.”

He first asked Beck in the second interview about Beck’s non-answer of Rodriguez’s question about who he was shooting at, “...so if you could just give us more details on what you’re referring to as you pointed and described, you know, who it was you were shooting?”

Beck responded with, “As explained before, there were multiple people firing when we arrived. The guy that I addressed was in the direction that — that I had referenced in the video, sir.”

Macchiarella followed up with “So how is it that when the sergeant asked you who the suspect was you were shooting at, and you said, ‘He was firing over this way,’ and then later on you told us that the suspect was pointing his gun at you and firing, if you can explain?”

Before Beck answered the question, his attorney David Winslow said, “And explain what you saw, because he’s telling you what he saw in the video. Tell him what you saw you doing with your hands in the video.”

Beck prefaced his answer with a statement about the “chaotic” nature of the situation. He also is interrupted by his attorney as he is explaining why he has “differing” statements. Beck then said that his gesture was describing where the gunfire was coming from. His attorney asked him if he was trying to show the direction of the gunfire or where the suspect was. Only in response to this question, Beck said that he was describing where the suspect was, as well as all of the other shooting happening at the time.

Macchiarella also inquired during the second interview about Beck’s various statements about not being able to see the person he shot at. Beck answered stating that he only meant that he could not see the person’s face very well.

LAPD stated that there can be “a number of reasons” why an officer would be interviewed twice, such as Beck was. Despite multiple requests for specificity, LAPD refused to state why Beck was interviewed twice for this investigation. However, FAU’s report having concluded that Beck shot Marshall, and Beck’s multiple statements about not seeing his target, points to why FID returned to interview Beck; LAPD did not immediately know that Beck had shot someone that night, and it certainly was not clear from Beck’s description of events.

According to a report that lists LAPD shootings, the types of firearms used by police in the shootings, and whether someone was hit with a bullet, listed the June 3, 2020 shooting as a “No-Hit.” LAPD refused to directly answer why the shooting was recorded as one without any LAPD shooting victims, but the city attorney’s office said in a letter to Inadvertent’s counsel, “It was not until ballistics confirmed the round that struck Mr. Marshall was fired from Officer Beck’s gun that the incident was changed to an ‘OIS-Hit.’”

In the end, Beck stated that his target was in the middle of 86th Place, between the entrances to both parking lots, approximately 50 to 70 yards in front of him, precisely where the dark sedan full of shooters they let slip past was idling.

Officers Coughlin and Jesus Ruiz also stated that Beck appeared to be shooting in that direction.

After the shootout, Beck and the other officers positioned themselves at 86th Place and Broadway, facing the direction of the parking lots. The car with whose passengers Beck had a shootout approached slowly, and neither Beck nor the individuals in the car said or did anything as it slow-rolled past LAPD, turned south on Broadway and left the area without further incident. Moments after, Marshall managed to drive away from the parking lots with a bullet lodged in his face. In a recorded interview with detectives, he described it like being hit with a “sledgehammer.” Analysis of the surveillance footage showed two individuals jumped into Marshall’s backseat. He drove east on 86th Place and made a left turn to go north on Main Street when LAPD Officers Yolotsi Jaral and Gregorio De La Rosa, who were on Main Street, saw him turn as he tried leaving the area along with everyone else at the party.

“That’s our guy,” said De La Rosa and began a pursuit.

In the critical incident video, LAPD highlighted guns that were thrown from Marshall’s car during the pursuit. An arrest warrant for Marshall showed that he, at one point, was wanted for assault with a deadly weapon on a police officer, however, the District Attorney (DA) did not find evidence of this due to the gun, a Ruger 9mm, that Marshall’s DNA was found on not being linked to the shots that were fired in the direction of Beck and his unit.

When Marshall got to 80th Street, he turned right. Halfway down the block, two firearms were thrown from the vehicle and landed on opposite sides of the street. LAPD and the DA’s office records regarding the locations of the firearms are inaccurate. According to them, the pistols, a 9 millimeter Ruger P85 and a 9 millimeter Taurus G2C, were located at 160 West 80th Street and 143 East 80th Street, respectively.

Marshall never drove on West 80th Street. The correct address for the Ruger’s location is 160 East 80th Street.

While seemingly innocuous typographical errors in record keeping, the incorrectly recorded locations of the pistols presented other questions that led to new insights about the shooting: LAPD struggled to provide the DA’s office with conclusive results about the incident. Despite dozens of bystanders, witnesses, and victims detained, dozens of police officers present, multiple gang detectives, the Firearms Analysis Unit, and Force Investigation Division working the case, the District Attorney’s office ultimately stated that they could only infer that “Marshall possessed a firearm” before Beck shot towards the crowds.

Underreported And Rare: Shadow Warrants Ripe For Abuse

In the days after the shooting, LAPD began obtaining search warrants from the Los Angeles Superior Court (LASC) for physical and digital belongings such as cars, cell phones, and data. Welch, the shooting victim who was on a delivery run that night before LAPD showed up, received two search warrants on different days. The first search warrant, issued on June 3, 2020, was for his vehicle and alleged evidence inside of it. The second search warrant, dated June 25, 2020, was for his phone, texts, emails, notes, voicemails, attachments, images, location data, social media posts, Wi-Fi logs, internet history, financial information, address book/contacts, bluetooth devices, passwords and more.

LAPD misused the search warrant they used to investigate Welch, withhold his cell phone from him and access personal data. The California penal code requires police agencies to return search warrants to the court after use, experts say, in order to “audit” the search and ensure that the police’s search remained within the search warrant’s scope. This was not the case with the search warrant handed to Welch on June 25, 2020 – LAPD never returned the warrant to the court. Not doing so made the warrant virtually untraceable, a shadow warrant, because the court does not issue an identification number, Inadvertent found, for search warrants until after they are returned. The public cannot ask to see that warrant because the court cannot locate it without the identification number and LAPD’s search conducted cannot be audited by the court.

The Los Angeles City Attorney’s office claimed that LAPD never used the search warrant handed to Welch, despite video evidence showing LAPD using the June 25 search warrant as the reason for withholding his property.

Data Inadvertent obtained through a public records request shows that LAPD failed to return search warrants to the court at least 34 times in 2020. From 2017 to 2021, the Southeast division failed to return a search warrant 52 times. Updated data from LAPD was never released.

The LAPD’s Detective Bureau, through the public information officer, refused to comment on the unreturned search warrants.

The Los Angeles Superior Court (LASC) stated that they do not keep statistics on search warrants, whether returned or unreturned. The court also declined to answer questions regarding the requirements to obtain a search warrant, how many search warrants are issued annually by LASC and how the court keeps track of unreturned warrants.

To LAPD, Welch was a suspect. His car, clothes, and phone were seized on the night of the shooting. Notably, his shoes feature a portrait of Nipsey Hussle. On June 25, 2020, Welch went to the LAPD Southeast station to demand his phone and clothes be returned to him. At the time, no search warrant had been issued nor given to him. Inadvertent documented the exchange between Welch and the detectives on video. Welch asserted that LAPD was violating his Fourth Amendment rights because he was a shooting victim, and no warrant existed for his phone and data.

At first, Detective Aaron Harrington stated: “Yes, we have a search warrant for your phone. It’s getting signed by a judge right now.”

Harrington would continue to withhold Welch’s property and engage in heated conversation with him. As Welch continued to demand the return of his property, insisting that his Fourth Amendment rights were being violated, Harrington changed his statement to “We’re getting a search warrant for your phone.”

At one point, Harrington went back into the station and his superior, Peter Verscherun, emerged with a search warrant. The warrant showed a judge’s electronic signature and a timestamp of 11:52 a.m.

Welch’s demands began at approximately 11:38 a.m, almost 14 minutes before the warrant was issued.

Welch backed off from his demands after being handed the warrant.

“That made me feel violated, it made me feel cheated, it made me feel like despite my efforts of trying to give back to the community and do right, they still treated me as like the lowest of the lowest,” said Welch during an interview, referring to his advocacy promoting college to the youth.

“One of the problems is all judicial records are presumed to be public records – so you have police going to a judge, having a judge sign off on a warrant, and then at that point, that judge isn’t responsible, and the court system isn’t at all responsible for keeping track of that warrant,” stated Colleen Flynn, a civil rights attorney.

“It’s only when you put the trust in the officer that they’re going to go execute the warrant and return the warrant and only at that point does the warrant get a warrant number and then become a document that the clerks can actually find and give to the public – is hugely problematic,” Flynn added.

Where Are Things Now?

Over five years after CSP Bureau’s inception, few incidents involving CSP officers have surfaced. It is unclear whether that is because there have not been any incidents or the city of L.A. obfuscates CSP’s involvement in the same way that it was for the June 3, 2020 incident. In December 2023, a CSP officer driving down Century Boulevard killed Luis Espinoza when he hit him with his car. CSP’s involvement was, again, not initially mentioned in details released about the incident. In June 2023, ChaSharee Hunter was brutally beaten by LAPD officers at the Nickerson Garden projects, a CSP area. She was filming officers chasing an individual through the projects when an officer repeatedly punched her in the face.

Six years have passed since California’s Right To Know Act (SB 1421) went into effect, the law that opened up records pertaining to police shootings and certain types of misconduct to the public. SB 1421 is one of the only tools that the public and reporters can use to better understand the inner workings of police departments — agencies that are typically heavily funded by taxpayers and whose employees enjoy legal protections not granted to other public employees or civilians.

The LAPD did not provide an answer as to why they do not disclose police shooting records in full and typically only release executive summaries or just critical incident videos. To this date, the LAPD, one of California’s largest police departments and responsible for policing a population of over 3.8 million, fails to meet SB1421’s requirements in almost every request.

The full scope of records relating to the June 3, 2020 shooting were withheld for almost four years, long past any statute of limitation that the public may have had in relation to bringing a civil rights claim. The delay, which the LAPD never explained, shuts the public out from learning, outside the LAPD’s narrative, about how communities are policed in the city of Los Angeles. Unless the public contracts lawyers or is informed about their rights under the California Public Records Act, and the department complies, the access to records pertaining to police shootings and serious misconduct is still limited despite state law.

Since the start of this investigation, the LA Superior Court has moved to a digital system for tracking search warrants, but their identification numbers are still assigned only after the warrant has been returned. This means that police agencies can still misuse warrants and avoid search audits, all while the public has no way of even knowing that a search warrant was issued.

Shadow warrants are still largely underreported, with the only coverage being a 2006 article in the Baltimore Sun titled “Unreturned warrants indicate a bigger issue.”

A 2023 self-audit of its search warrant practices found that LAPD had met its standard of timely service of and return of search warrants. However, the self-audit did not look into specific aspects — such as inconsistent information or the legality of executions of warrants — that would still allow for the creation and use of shadow warrants.

Publisher’s note: This story is being co-published with CALO News.

The Santa Ana Police Department (SAPD) is tracking all drivers across the city using automated license plate readers (ALPR) and putting their information into a privately-owned national database. The ALPR systems, approximately 57 cameras leased from private companies Flock Safety and Motorola, indiscriminately track law-abiding residents almost-exclusively. According to a statistic provided by SAPD, a mere .02% of total scans within one week resulted in a connection to a criminal investigation. SAPD’s mass surveillance of the Santa Ana community comes as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) looks to create a 24/7 social media surveillance team in Santa Ana at the Pacific Enforcement Response Center (PERC), according to ICE’s draft plans and reporting by WIRED.

In May, a Santa Ana city council majority voted in favor of mass tracking of Santa Ana residents by entering into contracts with Flock and Motorola. The move came despite a growing number of cities across the country abandoning their agreements with Flock in support of civil rights as well as the neighboring Orange County Sheriff’s Department and Los Angeles Police Department illegally sharing ALPR data with ICE. The council majority – Santa Ana Police Officers Association-aligned members Thai Viet Phan, Valerie Amezcua, Phil Bacerra and David Penaloza – lauded the mass surveillance technology as a way to assist SAPD in criminal investigations. According to a study by the Municipal Technical Advisory Service at the University of Tennessee, there is little empirical evidence that suggests surveillance cameras keep communities safe.

Council members Jessie Lopez, Johnathan Hernandez and Benjamin Vazquez voted against the mass surveillance technology contracts.

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“It diverts the conversation away from actually talking about measures that actually increase public safety and improves the quality of our lives,” Yadi Younse, an organizer with Oakland Privacy, said, “if law enforcement and politicians are utilizing technology as a crutch or are very eager to implement this technology solution, then that means that they don’t have to work on thinking through and discussing and finding solutions to actually improve the actual crime issues that are happening.”

At the October 7 council meeting, SAPD Chief Robert Rodriguez falsely stated that the ALPR cameras simply “read a license plate on vehicles…nothing else.” Inadvertent obtained data samples from Motorola’s ALPR system revealing what Motorola’s ALPR system collects: date, time and coordinates of the scan, as well as photographs of the entire vehicle, a driver or occupants and the background of where they are driving. Simply stated, the cameras capture anything in plain sight and allow police to see what you do every day when you leave your home. They operate 24/7, according to Flock’s website.

Rodriguez and the SAPD PIO unit did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

The cameras capture personal information of individuals rather than just license plates, according to Flock’s own materials, Motorola’s data and Younse. “They actually capture an image of the entire vehicle and anything that happens to be in the image that is captured by these cameras. And so that includes the color of the vehicle, and identifying features like bumper stickers that say you’re in favor of reproductive rights, or that you’re LGBTQ, or that you’re of a certain religion, among many, many other things,” she said.

According to both contracts, Flock and Motorola are authorized to share Santa Ana residents’ data with unidentified third parties without consent of the public. Flock’s contract also states that the company can use the data to train machine learning algorithms, also known as artificial intelligence (AI).

At the May meeting, Lopez spoke at length about her concerns with the technology. In a recent phone interview, she stated, “One of the issues that I talked about on the dais was my constituents not giving consent to the city council or to the city for their privacy to be lost. And it is nearly impossible to get that back for them.”

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SAPD is also withholding the locations of the cameras. On September 9, SAPD denied a request for records relating to the installation of the Flock cameras. Lopez also stated that the city did not answer her question about the locations of the cameras. However, at the recent State of the City address, Rodriguez said that the cameras were installed “across key corridors” in the city. So far, Inadvertent has located six intersections within Santa Ana city limits that Flock ALPR cameras were installed in: Main Street & 17th Street, Bristol Street & 17th Street, Harbor Boulevard & MacArthur Boulevard, Buffalo Avenue & Broadway, Dyer Road & Grand Avenue, Bristol near Memory Lane. The ALPR systems are typically on signal light poles on corners. They are black and feature a solar panel installed above them.

The public can report Flock cameras on DeFlock, a free community resource.

After vehicles are scanned, the data collected is sent to national databases that police across the country access. Each instance the public is logged creates more data points, that, in aggregate, can tell police information such as where a resident often goes, who else frequents that location, where someone may shop, buy groceries, go to work, drop their kids off at, go to school at, or hang out with – all without any reasonable suspicion that the person is doing anything unlawful.

Younse, based in Pasadena, said, “There are cameras specifically outside of two of the dance studios I go to. And I go to the dance studios five or six days out of the week. And so if there was a camera by my house – and they are planning to install cameras close to where I live – they will be able to take an image every single time I’m going to that studio and that means that law enforcement will have a record of where I am at 6:30 PM, five to six days a week.”

SAPD’s ALPR policy states that they will store Flock data for one year and Motorola data for five years. It states that the data itself is not a public record because it may contain “confidential information,” which is at odds with Rodriguez’s claim that only license plates are captured. Furthermore, a 2017 California Supreme Court ruling established that ALPR data is disclosable under the state’s open records law with anonymization or other steps taken to protect the public’s privacy in mass disclosure.

SAPD did not answer a single question about Policy 436, their ALPR policy. The policy was created by another private company, Lexipol, who also did not respond to a request for comment. Flock did not respond to a request for comment.

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Birds Of A Feather Flock Together

SAPD and Flock had been in communication since at least January 2025, according to text messages between Commander Gil Hernandez and Flock representative Larry Barsocchini.

“Hey Larry, happy new year,” wrote SAPD Commander Gil Hernandez on January 14, “Just a heads up, I gave your contact number to Carolyn Killian [sic] who is one of our property managers within the city. They are interested in purchasing ALPR cameras.”

According to the company’s website, Killion is a property manager at 4 Hutton Centre Drive, the property adjacent to ICE’s PERC at 3 Hutton Centre Drive. The city of Santa Ana also recently entered into a contract with Killion’s company, Ares Asset Management LLC, to lease space for an SAPD substation at 4 Hutton Centre Drive.

ICE’s draft plans show their social media surveillance teams, which make up part of the Targeting Operations Division (TOD) based at the PERC, will consist of sixteen people. TOD is part of ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) – the same division that is snatching people away.

The team structure, according to the documents, is: a site lead, three senior analysts and twelve analysts. Their mission, according to ICE’s records, is to “identify and provide location information on individuals” and will “compile, analyze, organize, and transmit all information obtained to ICE personnel.”

“The contractor will research and analyze data from commercial and law enforcement databases as well as other publicly accessible, open-source, and social media platforms to support investigations and aid in targeting individuals for arrest in furtherance of ICE law enforcement missions,” records say.

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Council member Bacerra did not respond to repeated requests for comment about the PERC located in his ward. His calendar shows that he met with Killion in December 2024 to discuss the substation adjacent to the PERC.

Mayor Amezcua and council members Phan, Penaloza, Vazquez and Hernandez also did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

The city of Santa Ana and ICE have locked arms by entering into these public-private partnerships: using contractors to spy on the community under the guise of law enforcement.

And the mayor is in denial about it.

“When I think about solutions to crime, those solutions don’t hurt other people in the process and they don’t perpetuate injustices,” said Council member Lopez.

The Flock cameras on Main & 17th. Credit: Rafael Gutierrez

Edit 11/16/2025: The word “purchased” was changed to “leased” .

Edit 11/18/2025: A description of Chief Rodriguez’s speech was shortened.

Edit 11/19/2025: A sixth intersection where the Flock system was installed was added. The street name “Hotel Terrace” was changed to Grand Avenue, an adjacent intersection.

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A lawsuit exposing the Santa Ana Police Department’s (SAPD) gang-like groups began trial with opening arguments starting today. The case, filed against the city of Santa Ana on October 21, 2022 by former SAPD Police Administrative Manager Rita Ramirez, alleged retaliation, harassment and discrimination by SAPD top brass, including then-Chief David Valentin and then-Internal Affairs (IA) Commander Robert Rodriguez. The case is one of several pending that breaks open how Valentin wielded power against officers who allegedly refused to show “loyalty” to him.

Valentin retired in 2023 and was replaced by Rodriguez, who is still chief today.

The lawsuit outlines how the department heads allegedly pushed Ramirez out of her job for her refusal to pick a side between two then-opposing factions: Valentin’s loyalists and then-Santa Ana Police Officer’s Association (SAPOA) President Gerry Serrano’s loyalists.

The lawsuit came after Inadvertent reported on SAPD’s gang-like group: the now-defunct Major Enforcement Team (MET). MET was an exclusive SAPD unit, created and used by Valentin, who shared gang-like skull tattoos and have been the subject to complaints of alleged misconduct both off and on duty but faced no discipline, according to police records and sources within the department. The unit was formed on January 6, 2020 and consisted of Valentin’s loyalists, including then-Sergeant Oscar Lizardi.

MET was disbanded in 2024 but most officers who participated in the gang-like activities remain in the department, including now-Chief Rodriguez. During his time as IA Commander, Rodriguez delayed the investigation of a child sexual assault by MET members and shielded them from investigation and potential prosecution, according to a complaint submitted by SAPD Commander Manuel Moreno. The complaint has since been investigated by a city-hired investigator but the findings have been withheld by the city.

Ramirez’s lawsuit detailed how her refusal to “pick a camp” within the department led to Valentin retaliating through his loyalists and ultimately pushed her out of the department. Witness lists filed in the lawsuit show that around 40 people are set to testify, they include: Valentin, Rodriguez, Moreno, Serrano, assistant city attorney Tamara Bogosian, former city manager Kristine Ridge, Commanders Jose Gonzalez, Jorge Lopez, other current and former SAPD top brass, as well as rank and file officers. Court filings show that over 100 hours of testimony is estimated in the trial.

SAPD and its political wing, the SAPOA, had long-been divided internally, but the power struggle between its heads reached a boiling point during Valentin and Serrano’s time – a conflict that permeated the police department, the association, and city hall. The conflict played out through lawsuits, city elected officials, recall elections, a vote of no confidence, complaints, letters and threats to burn down the city.

It became a cornerstone of Santa Ana politics as two competing factions sought to hold onto power. And, court records allege, deeply affected working conditions at the department.

Now, the city could be on the hook for millions of dollars in damages for allegedly failing to hold any of its current and former top brass, including Valentin and Rodriguez, accountable.

The case revealed a timeline of events that show that Ramirez, while still at SAPD, took steps to try and remedy strained tensions as she refused to “pick a side.” According to the case, “no corrective action was ever taken.”

In the wake of both faction heads – Valentin and Serrano – leaving the picture in 2023, the SAPD and SAPOA have seemingly realigned under new heads: Rodriguez and SAPOA President John Kachirisky. One of Kachirisky’s first efforts was to attempt to “rebrand” the organization, as it had earned the reputation of being run by a “boogeyman,” according to Mayor Valerie Amezcua.

What was once an adversarial relationship between faction heads has formed into a more unified force. Amezcua and council members Phil Bacerra and David Penaloza, who were all supported by SAPOA’s heavy-spending in their election or re-election campaigns, have also demonstrated their allegiance to the SAPOA. Similarly, council member Thai Viet Phan also regularly aligns her votes with her SAPOA-backed colleagues ever since the SAPOA dropped their recall effort against her in 2023.

Ramirez’s lawsuit against the city comes to trial after 3 years of litigation. The trial is estimate to last until early December. The case number is: 30-2022-01287702-CU-OE-NJC.

City spokesperson Paul Eakins said that the city has no comment at this time.

Ramirez, through her attorney, did not respond to a request for comment before publishing time.

Edit 10/28/2025, 7:50PM: Corrections on job titles were made, as well as language to make clear that Ramirez’s lawsuits contains allegations.

Publisher’s note: This story is being co-published with Abraham Márquez’s Substack.

Update 10/17, 3:07PM: The judge denied the city’s motion to lift the injunction. LAPD is still barred from shooting journalists working at protests.

The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) wants to be able to legally shoot journalists with kinetic weapons at the “No Kings” protest this Saturday, according to court records filed on Wednesday. The city of Los Angeles is asking a federal judge to lift a preliminary injunction that forbids the LAPD from shooting journalists with kinetic weapons while reporting at protests.

The filings are part of a case filed by the Los Angeles Press Club (LAPC) and Status Coup against the city of LA and its police chief, Jim McDonnell. The case was filed after LAPD, along with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department (LASD) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), used kinetic weapons against journalists covering protests against state-sanctioned kidnappings. LASD and DHS also used chemical weapons.

LAPC and Status Coup’s attorneys responded on Thursday with an opposition to the city’s filing. They argued that the city’s request for an emergency motion to lift the injunction is improper. They also argued that lifting the injunction – allowing LAPD to shoot journalists – is “contrary to the public interest.”

The first “No Kings” protest in LA took place on June 14th, with an estimated 30,000 people in attendance. Over 2,000 protests were held nationwide on the same day against Trump’s plan to cut social programs. Over 5 million people participated in a “No Kings” across the US.

LAPD also took to the streets in a show of force that resulted in violent repression against protestors and journalists. That day, videos showed the LAPD shooting at protesters indiscriminately.

The city’s filing argued that the injunction should be lifted because the LAPD cannot avoid using chemical and kinetic weapons against journalists when protests happen. LAPD Metropolitan Division Lieutenant Joseph Dunster, in his declaration filed alongside the city’s motion, explained that 40mm and 37mm kinetic weapons, as well as tear gas, cannot be used in a way that does not target journalists who are working at protests.

The city’s filing implied that the LAPD is not capable of determining who poses a threat. “Paragraph 3 bars the use of less-lethal munitions or chemical agents against journalists not posing an imminent threat,’ but provides no definition of ‘imminent threat’ or ‘objectively dangerous and unlawful situation.’”

Penal Code Section 409.7, which went into effect in 2022, states that police are not allowed to intentionally assault, interfere with, or obstruct duly authorized journalists at demonstrations. Despite these protections, dozens of journalists have documented being struck by crowd-control munitions in recent months while displaying their press badges or wearing marked Press vests. The lawsuit against the city and the LAPD chief was filed because the LAPD had repeatedly violated state law, and seemingly their own policies, by shooting journalists who were covering the protests.

The injunction came after lawyers for LAPC and Status Coup presented the court with various instances of LAPD’s pattern of brutalizing reporters with less lethal munitions.

The city’s motion challenges previous court rulings that limited police from targeting or obstructing journalists and media workers, such as camera operators, during protests. Those rulings, in the past ten months in cities like Paramount, Compton, Los Angeles, and Portland, were meant to protect journalists under the First Amendment after multiple documents and evidence showed that journalists were targeted by law enforcement with rubber bullets, tear gas, or arrests while clearly identifying themselves as press.

In the filing, the city argued that the injunction, which restricts LAPD from shooting journalists, endangers officers and hinders their ability to maintain “order” during “chaotic conditions.” Another claim is that in large protests that move through the city, it is often impossible to distinguish between civilians and members of the press, especially at night when journalists are “embedded” among the crowd. Journalists wear credentials, have cameras, lights, patches, and other equipment that distinguishes them in a crowd of protestors.

The city aims to loosen the rules governing the use of “less-lethal” weapons, allowing officers to use them if they perceive an imminent “threat,” regardless of whether the press is present. This justification is also used when police officers kill someone. Police often claim that they fear for their lives when shooting someone, no matter what profession the person has. In 2017, USA Today reported that the justification is the “best cop excuse”, after the killing of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald.

This comes on the heels of nearly five months during which immigrant communities have seen unmarked cars with masked men kidnapping people under the orders of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), with the full support of the Trump Administration, while Mayor Karen Bass struggles to catch up with responses to the federal actions.

In a statement to LAist, Adam Rose, press rights chair for LAPC, said, “Instead of holding the department accountable, the city is spending even more money to hire an outside law firm so they can effectively beg a judge for permission to keep assaulting journalists for just doing their job. The mayor of Los Angeles needs to take charge here, and Bass has been completely absent.”

As the case continues, the outcome could determine whether journalists have some protection when reporting from the frontlines or whether documenting police actions during civil unrest will run the risk of retaliation by the institutions they aim to hold accountable.

This could send signals across the nation to other cities, police departments, and journalists covering the unrest, as the Trump Administration allocated more funding to ICE. In comparison, police departments continue to receive more funding from cities to occupy our public spaces and detain community members.

Despite the LAPD’s and federal government’s violent tactics against Angelenos, the mayor‘s statement focused on protestors needing to be “peaceful.” She included a veiled threat of police violence against protesters and press: “As always, the Los Angeles Police Department is expected to uphold those same rights — ensuring public safety while protecting the freedoms of expression and assembly and the rights of the press.”

At today’s council meeting, LA City Council voted unanimously to formally ask the city attorney to withdraw her motion that seeks to lift the injunction.

The opposition to the LAPD’s motion stated, “If the City can comply with Penal Code section 409.7, it can follow the injunction. And if it cannot — as its long-running history of using force on and denying access to journalists at protests and the Court’s factual findings show—the Preliminary Injunction is unquestionably necessary.”

Update 10/17, 9:40AM: A section from the opposition filing was added to the end of the article.

Update 10/17, 11:17AM: The article was updated with the mayor chiming in.

Update 10/17, 3:07PM: A section reflecting the city council’s vote to ask the city attorney to withdraw the motion has been added.

This article first appeared on the author’s Substack. It has been republished here with permission. Subscribe to Abraham Márquez to receive more of his work.

Around the world, teachers are often regarded as mentors, movement builders, guides, and community organizers. When they extend their lessons beyond the classroom, applying theory into practice, their actions serve as powerful tools and symbols of conscience.

On October 8th, marking the second anniversary of Israel’s attack on Palestinians in Gaza, more than one hundred K-12 educators from across the United States began a three-day hunger strike to raise awareness about the severe situation facing Palestinian children in the Israeli-occupied Gaza Strip. Teachers are calling on policymakers to act now to protect the rights of Palestinian children.

“I joined the hunger strike because we must protest the United States’ complicity in the genocide and starvation of children in Gaza. On a personal note, I lost a younger cousin this past weekend as well, but the immense pain I feel is only a fraction of the pain that the people in Gaza have been enduring for the past two years. Too many young children, mothers, fathers, and innocents have been senselessly massacred,” said Mike Rodriguez, a public school educator from Orange County (OC).

Over the past two years, educators across the country have employed various forms of protest to raise awareness about the Palestinian cause. There is no single, verified total for teachers fired due to their support for Palestine, but reports from across the nation mention professors being dismissed for showing support.

Internationally recognized humanitarian organizations have documented the inhumane treatment Palestinians face since October 2023. The United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) reported in December 2023 that “The Gaza Strip is the most dangerous place in the world to be a child. And day after day, that brutal reality is reinforced.”

The United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) Secretary General, Mr. Tom Fletcher, stated on September 24th:

“To try to find words to convey the horror, and to fail again to do it justice. To repeat that something must be done. And, I fear, to accept that nothing will.

Knowing that our words will not reach Mariam (who was killed a month ago), the children under the bombs, those scraping through the rubble for food, enduring amputations without anesthetic, losing their last sparks of hope.

Fearing that not a single word today will reach and resonate those who could stop this 21st century atrocity.”

Since October 2023, over 67,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli attacks. Thousands more are under the rubble. “At least 20,000 children are among the dead, or one child killed every hour for the past 24 months,” according to a recent Al Jazeera article.

The effects of Israel’s bombing campaign on the Gaza Strip are compounded by the 16-year siege, during which Israel maintains a stranglehold, restricting the amount of food, aid, and materials that can enter the enclave.

Teachers dedicate their lives to nurturing others, yet they are now risking their own health for three days to call attention to the suffering of people beyond their classrooms, the Palestinian children in the Gaza Strip. Their hunger strike becomes both an act of solidarity and a moral lesson for the world.

“The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) and the World Health Organization (WHO) both published a report stating that there is famine in Gaza,” said Erika Gomez, an educator from Los Angeles. “Over half a million people will face catastrophic levels of starvation, and many will die without anyone hearing about it because Israel has killed almost all the journalists in Gaza.”

This hunger strike demonstrates that education doesn’t stop when the school bell rings, it carries on in the streets and public spaces.

“I’ve never gone three days without eating. It feels like a long time. But after those three days, I’ll be able to eat again, and the people in Gaza won’t be able to,” said Colin, a middle school teacher in Massachusetts. “Experientially, it’s very personal, but doing this as a group offers a portal into a more universal struggle.”

In their press release, they state that each participant will decide the length and intensity of their action.

This nationwide hunger strike is one of many that have occurred since October 2023 to raise awareness about the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. College students across Los Angeles and nationwide have adopted this form of protest to stop the genocide and pressure their universities to divest from companies complicit in Israel’s genocide.

“I am joining in on the hunger strike with teachers across the U.S. to bring attention to the mass starvation of the people in Gaza, and especially the children,” said Linn Lee, a retired public school educator from the O.C.

The hunger strike, organized by Educators for Palestine, a caucus within the National Education Association (NEA), follows the group’s recent push to have the nation’s largest labor union sever ties with the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). Many K–12 educators involved in the effort argue that the ADL functions as a pro-Israel political advocacy group rather than a social justice partner for schools. NEA delegates voted to end the union’s collaboration with the ADL, but the decision was later overturned by NEA leadership following pressure from the ADL.

“In addition to the work I’ve done through the union, I have been contacting legislators, standing out at protests, and donating money,” said Theresa, a middle school nurse in Minnesota. “This hunger strike is kind of upping it to the next level. We are putting our own bodies in harm’s way. A hunger strike is a more active way to participate and use my body to show resistance and solidarity.”

The strikers hope that their message reaches the people of Gaza, and that they know people are thinking about them daily. Their message is clear: education must be paired with action, and compassion must move us to do the right thing.

Santa Ana Police Department (SAPD) officers Luis Casillas, Isaac Ibarra and Nelson Menendez filed hostile work environment complaints against Santa Ana City Councilmember Johnathan Hernandez. The complaints were filed in July and have since been investigated by the city’s human resources department, according to city staff at the October 7 council meeting. The outcome of those investigations was not disclosed.

Last week, a city council majority voted to move forward with an investigation into Hernandez’s alleged conduct, separate from the city’s completed investigation.

The complaints were initially withheld from the public, but after the council meeting the city disclosed them with redactions. Inadvertent determined the redacted identities of the officers using the content of the complaints and public records.

Click the name of the cop to view his complaint: Luis Casillas, Isaac Ibarra, Nelson Menendez.

In Casillas’ complaint, submitted July 15, he cited alleged “slander” and “libelous statements” that Hernandez allegedly made about him in relation to two police killings that Casillas took part in. The killings happened within 30 days of each other. Casillas’ complaint included a screenshot of Hernandez’s official Instagram account reposting Inadvertent’s story about the killings. In the screenshot, Hernandez’s own comment about the incidents said:

“This is not public safety. This is street terrorism. Santa Ana PD needs to be investigated by [Attorney General Rob Bonta] and the Department of Justice. Santa Ana residents are not safe in a community where police believe that they have absolute immunity to kill 2 people in the span of 30 days. SAPD needs to be held accountable.”

Casillas and one of the other complainants, Ibarra, both shot and killed unarmed Noe Rodriguez in a barrage of gunfire on December 1, 2024. Members of the public who were at a restaurant near the shooting called SAPD to report the gunfire, unaware that it was two SAPD cops who unloaded their weapons into an unarmed man, according to the 911 call audio. Rodriguez’s widow, Erika Armenta, called it an “assassination” by Casillas and Ibarra. The killing of Noe Rodriguez by Casillas and Ibarra is currently under investigation by the California Department of Justice.

One month later on January 1, 2025, Casillas killed again when he shot Henry Gonzalez Jr. in the head as he held a knife to his mother.

On June 9, 2025, Casillas is alleged to have participated in the beatdown of a child who had surrendered, according to the child, his mother and a now-deleted video from SAPD.

According to city and SAPD sources not authorized to speak on the issue, Casillas is no longer on active patrol.

Casillas did not respond to a request for comment.

Hernandez said, “A cop who kills two people in 30 days is abandoning public safety. A police officer’s job is to make sure someone has a day in court. I think due process is already underway here and due process was not afforded to Henry Gonzalez Jr. and Noe Rodriguez. Shooting an unarmed man over 32 times is lawless for members of the public and myself.”

In another screenshot attached to Casillas’ complaint, Hernandez’s official Instagram account replied to former SAPD officer Joshua Wiggs’ account stating that Wiggs’ former colleagues who are “murdering members of the public, in some cases killing two people within a thirty day span, they are the ones who look bad.”

The screenshot did not show what preceded Hernandez’s comment.

Wiggs left the department in 2022 after experiencing workplace issues with SAPD top brass, including then-Sergeant, now-Commander Oscar Lizardi. On his podcast, Wiggs has spoken out about the culture at SAPD. In one episode, he referred to when Lizardi allegedly attempted to influence Wiggs’ just before an SAPD Internal Affairs (IA) interview that Wiggs was walking into. The IA interview was related to former SAPD officer Anthony Cardenal. Cardenal has since filed a lawsuit against the city alleging retaliation.

Officer Ibarra’s complaint, submitted July 7, is pegged to similar issues stemming from Hernandez’s commentary about Ibarra killing Rodriguez.

His complaint reads, “...during a livestreamed and publicly recorded City Council meeting, Councilmember Hernandez referred to me as a ‘murderer’ in connection with [a police shooting]1 that occurred on December 1, 2024. This incident remains under investigation, and I have not been afforded due process. His characterization was reckless, defamatory, and prejudicial.”

He also complained about Hernandez allegedly misrepresenting a public interaction. The interaction took place at a city groundbreaking event. Ibarra claimed to have “made every effort to avoid unnecessary interaction.” Hernandez later initiated a conversation where he asked for Ibarra’s name and badge number. At first, Ibarra only provided his last name and told Hernandez, “You know me.”

Hernandez asked again for his badge number, Ibarra provided it and stated, “No time for your political circus right now.”

Here is footage of the interaction. It is a public record.

The body worn camera footage of the public interaction can also be viewed here.

Ibarra’s complaint goes on to say that he no longer feels safe “attending community events or even shopping” in Santa Ana. The complaint makes a vague reference to Hernandez allegedly releasing “internal departmental materials and personal information.”

It is unclear what material or information Ibarra is referring to, but courts have upheld that photographs of police officers are public record.

All of SAPD’s names, badge numbers and photographs are also viewable on Inadvertent’s No Secret Police database.

Ibarra and Casillas were recently sued by Armenta for killing Rodriguez. Armenta is Rodriguez’s widow.

Ibarra did not respond to questions by the time of publishing.

Officer Menendez’s complaint, submitted July 14, is about Hernandez reposting a “defamatory ‘murder flyer.’” The murder flyer is a satirical “be on the lookout” (BOLO) bulletin allegedly created by current and former SAPD officers as a callous prank on Menendez. The BOLO was posted in SAPD’s patrol roll call room on October 23, 2021, and stated that Menendez had lied on radio communications about seeing a gun in Brandon Lopez’s possession. Lopez was Hernandez’s cousin and was killed by Anaheim Police Department (APD) officers with the assistance of SAPD on September 28, 2021.

According to body-worn camera footage released through a lawsuit, Menendez was merely relaying the observations that officers Kenney Aguilar and Luis Galeana were making about Lopez on the day of the incident. Lopez was in fact unarmed: no weapon was located after the shooting. Menendez, in his complaint, reaffirmed this.

The BOLO incident offered a look into the culture of harassment and retaliation inside of the SAPD. Menendez’s complaint states, “At the time the murder flyer was originally discovered, I made a formal complaint and investigations were conducted by the Santa Ana Police Department Internal Affairs and an independent investigator retained by the city. No corrective action was ever taken by the City.”

The complaint also states that Hernandez’s reposting of the BOLO “is part of a clear pattern of harassment and retaliation stemming from my civil lawsuit filed nearly three years ago, which outline discrimination, denial of advancement opportunities, and targeted mistreatment within the Santa Ana Police Department.”

The BOLO became a public record after it was leaked to this reporter and published on Inadvertent’s SAPD Gang series.

Hernandez stated that he shared the article showing the BOLO because after SAPD brutalized the community for protesting against the state-sanctioned kidnappings, members of the public were asking questions of SAPD. He said, “I shared a number of articles that highlighted police misconduct and that article highlights a clear divide within the police department and shows the way that police officers see each other. This is a department that no longer works for the people.”

Menendez could not comment on the matters, citing his ongoing civil lawsuit against the city.

Of the complaints, Councilmember Hernandez said, “These complaints are rooted in attempts to violate my First Amendment rights. The complaints are lodged at me because over the last 10 months, I have seen hundreds of commenters, members of the public, who have lost loved ones to police. I shared an article that was written by [Inadvertent] and officers saw that as harassment. The only people that are accountable for the loss of life of Henry Gonzalez Jr. and Noe Rodriguez are the officers that are being investigated by the DOJ. We believe people deserve due process and that’s why the city council chamber has been used for free speech.”

Public records requests for Santa Ana Mayor Valerie Amezcua’s text communications between June 6 and June 11 regarding the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids and protests against the raids, as well as messages spanning two years with her chief of staff, resulted in zero records being disclosed. State law and a California Supreme Court ruling require disclosure of a city official’s texts about the public’s business even if they were sent on personal devices.

The request for communications about ICE and the community’s resistance resulted in dozens of email threads being disclosed, but proved what the community had been feeling since the raids began: the mayor was largely absent in those first few days. According to the records, Amezcua replied to just 3 emails: Santa Ana Police Chief Robert Rodriguez about charges on a protester booked at the Santa Ana jail, city manager Alvaro Nuñez about canceling soccer field reservations, and a Christian faith leader who had let her know he could not attend a virtual meeting.

This request came at a time when Amezcua’s leadership — or lack thereof — was criticized by constituents in a five hour public shaming at a city council meeting on June 17. Inadvertent asked Amezcua multiple times to commit to voluntarily disclosing what she did and who she was in contact with during the start of the ICE terror when people were kidnapped by masked agents on the street and the Santa Ana Police Department (SAPD) brutalized protestors who stood in defiance of the raids.

Amezcua did not respond to requests for a voluntary disclosure of a timeline of her actions.

The request for two years worth of messages between Amezcua and her chief of staff Claudia Perez sought communications ranging February 19, 2023 to February 19, 2025. Inadvertent requested these communications after the city refused to release messages Amezcua and Perez exchanged – which Inadvertent photographed as they happened – during a September 2024 mayoral debate about public policy. At the same debate, Perez and city council member Phil Bacerra communicated via Signal, an encrypted messaging application, and deleted their messages about the public’s business within 24 hours, also against city policy and state law.

Both Amezcua and Perez did not respond to repeated requests for comment about their communications and whether city staff asked them to forward their text messages about the public’s business. City spokesperson Paul Eakins said that staff asks officials to forward their relevant communications when requests like these come in. Eakins also stated that the city is compliant with the California Public Records Act, the state’s open records law.

Perez’s role as chief of staff is through a professional service agreement with the city worth $60,000. The agreement states that her obligation is to provide Amezcua with “administrative, constituent, and legislative support services.”

Responsibilities that fall squarely into the public’s business.

Perez’s invoice for work performed in June 2025 lists work that is almost exclusively in the public sphere such as: staff role at city council meetings, meetings with constituents, a groundbreaking ceremony and a meeting with the Orange County Transportation Authority. The invoice was obtained through a public records request for Perez’s emails that are kept on city servers.

The city’s email and text retention policy states that city officials must keep their communications for two years, but it is unclear how this is enforced.

The city’s public records request policy pre-dates their use of NextRequest, the system used to facilitate requests, according to Eakins. According to a public records request, the city has no policy or instructions on how to use NextRequest.

This all appears to leave staff with discretion on how to handle records requests submitted by the public.

For now, it seems the city is set on keeping the mayor’s texts confidential despite open records law and the state supreme court’s ruling.

Update 10/6/2025: A revised audit was issued today and the brokerage account has disappeared from the report. Without the brokerage account, the audit now states that there was no overpayment.

Update 11/11/2025: This article was updated to include a link to John Kachirisky’s bankruptcy filing.

An independent audit of the Santa Ana Police Officers Association’s (SAPOA) medical insurance trust fund revealed a deficit of $608,894 despite the city of Santa Ana overpaying $3.4 million to the fund in 2023. The audit further revealed that the SAPOA held a reserve of around $6 million in securities using a Charles Schwab brokerage account during the same year.

The audit appears to be the first of its kind, with the requirement stemming from the SAPOA and city’s memorandum of understanding (MOU), a collectively-bargained agreement.

On Monday, council member Ben Vazquez called upon the Attorney General Rob Bonta’s office to investigate “potential financial mismanagement” due to the deficit and overpayment.

Vazquez stated that he forwarded this letter to Bonta’s chief of staff, which formally requested a “forensic audit of all SAPOA accounts dating back 10 years.”

SAPOA President John Kachirisky and spokesperson Claudio Gallegos did not respond to requests for comment by publishing time. The SAPOA issued a statement yesterday asking for an apology from Vazquez, but provided no explanation for the deficit. The statement did not address the brokerage account.

The trust is funded by the city’s taxpayer dollars, including Santa Ana police officers who contribute monthly through their paychecks. It is unclear what happens to potential profits from investments. Vazquez stated that the Charles Schwab investment account— because it is funded by taxpayer money — needs to be investigated by the attorney general’s office.

A police association member Inadvertent spoke to on the condition of anonymity was not aware of the trust fund being invested. He stated, “It should not be touched for anything but medical is my understanding.”

Per the MOU, trustees are appointed to manage the fund. The SAPOA’s medical insurance fund trustees are Kachirisky, Pedro Duran, Jose Mendoza, Luis Barragan and Paul McClaskey — they are also the SAPOA’s executive board and current or former Santa Ana Police Department (SAPD) employees.

Kachirisky and his wife declared bankruptcy in 2011 due to credit card debt totaling over $70,000. According to court records, a repayment plan was followed until 2017 when the case was dismissed. Kachirisky was the vice president of the SAPOA before becoming the president in 2023 after then-President Gerry Serrano was forced out by then-City Manager Kristine Ridge.

This is a developing story.

The Santa Ana Police Officers’ Association (SAPOA) sent me a cease and desist (C&D) letter demanding that I stop communicating with Santa Ana Police Department (SAPD) officers. They also threatened to sue me if I did not comply.

The letter reads, “You have telephoned certain officers and emailed them demanding they answer your questions and to respond to your frivolous requests. This must stop. By way of this correspondence, it is demanded that you CEASE & DESIST from any and all direct or indirect communication with any member of SAPOA.”

It is nothing but a cowardly move to attempt to silence a reporter by sending a frivolous, laughable and ridiculous demand that frames journalism as a criminal act and characterizes requests for comment as harassment.

My attorney, Shakeer Rahman, sent back this reply earlier today.

To be clear, any and all communication I have had with SAPD officers is in the course of my journalism. It is a longstanding journalistic practice to contact someone for a news report about them and give them a chance to speak on the record. Not doing so would be journalistic malpractice and unfair to the subject.

The SAPOA’s C&D did not specify which officers this is about, but these few come to mind:

• Luis Casillas

• Isaac Ibarra

• Nickolas Cavendish

On August 19, I contacted Casillas and Ibarra to ask them questions related to the execution-style killing they carried out on Noe Rodriguez. The phone call happened after a press conference that morning where Rodriguez’s family and attorney signaled they were a couple weeks away from filing lawsuits against the city of Santa Ana, Casillas and Ibarra. The wife of Rodriguez called the shooting an “assassination.”

The incident is under investigation by the California Attorney General’s office and could result in criminal charges brought against Casillas and Ibarra.

On July 12, I contacted Cavendish with questions about his conduct at a traffic stop where he threatened to kill the driver of a vehicle who had his hands up in a “surrender” position. The city paid out $417,500 to the driver and passenger after legal claims were filed alleging civil rights violations.

Needless to say, these are matters of public concern and reporting about such is First Amendment protected activity that will definitely not stop.

Your support also means that this work can continue.

On a scale of $1 to $100 or more, how ridiculous is the SAPOA’s demand?

Respond here: https://ko-fi.com/inadvertent

If you are a SAPD employee and have information to share, please reach out. Your identity will be protected.

If you have sensitive leaks, consult this guide first.

No Secret Police (NSP) is a public records database created to bring transparency to police agencies in California. It currently hosts only the Santa Ana Police Department’s (SAPD) records, however more agencies’ records are being processed for this evergreen project. The database is a tool for the public to identify and learn about police officers in their city. It shows: names, badge numbers, headshot photographs, division, rank and how many taxpayer dollars are budgeted for each individual. All of the information is public record and is sourced through public records requests or lawsuits enforcing public records requests.

NSP gives the public access to data about the individual officers without depending the police department for information.While this type of information — basic public data — is often obfuscated by police departments or officers themselves to avoid accountability, NSP aims to be a central repository for these records.

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This is not the first database of its kind. In 2023, the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition published the Los Angeles Police Department’s (LAPD) headshot photographs and other basic public information on their database after the journalist behind Inadvertent initially shared the photographs with the coalition. More information on that can be found on NSP’s “About” page.

Too often there are incidents where police refuse to identify, improperly cover their badges or lie to the public about who they are or what they are doing. NSP is a response to this culture of secrecy that exists within police departments. The culture is pervasive across state, local and national politics. Currently, the Association for Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs (ALADS) is appealing a recent court ruling where a judge determined that the public has a right to photos of LA deputy sheriffs. ALADS also pushed for AB 1178, which, prior to being amended, sought to make photos of certain police officers confidential.

Several other agencies are attempting to withhold their identities despite state law and case law being clear: cops are public employees, not secret police.

If you want to see your local police department on this transparency database, please reach out.

The database link is here: https://www.nosecretpolice.net

Donate to keep the database updated & maintained, it is a people-funded transparency project: https://ko-fi.com/inadvertent

Publisher’s note: “The Southland As I’ve Seen It” is a curated gallery of photographs taken in the Southland over the past few years. It is available to view here.

I have always been a writer since grade school, but I was a photographer before I was a journalist. Learning how to use a camera began in 2013 in my Brandt Hall dorm room at the University of La Verne. A friend who was already a photographer had reached out about starting a music review blog because he heard that I was studying journalism at college and needed a writer. I was eighteen and absolutely stoked to start on this project. Within a year, we grew to a handful of people on the team and were able to get access to most local venues and festivals to write and photograph. The site is archived but I’ll let you all try to find that on your own because, as other creatives can likely relate, seeing your early work can make you cringe.

Regardless, we did the damn thing and through that I became a capable photographer. Soon enough, I had an appendage to document time with friends and family. I was mostly unaware of the world around me still and my photographs reflected that. Though the Ferguson Uprising was showing up on my Twitter feed, I was not thinking critically about what it meant.

I remember the day that Donald Trump, in the same grandiose and narcissistic fashion he does today, came down the Trump tower escalator and told the world he was running for president. He said, “…and we are going to make our country great again.”

It was June 16, 2015. Soon after that, I learned that it wasn’t just fashion — it was fascism.

Read more

Publisher’s Note: Reader’s discretion is advised as this story contains extremely violent and graphic language.

Santa Ana Police Department (SAPD) officer Nickolas Cavendish made a death threat during a traffic stop that resulted in the driver and passenger of the vehicle filing legal claims with the city of Santa Ana which were settled for $417,500. The claims, filed by Jacob Smith and Pierce Peiffer, alleged that SAPD violated their civil rights on when they “unlawfully” stopped and detained them on December 16, 2023 “without probable cause or reasonable suspicion of criminal activity.”

They also claimed that SAPD assaulted them and took their belongings without returning them.

Body worn camera footage captured approximately two minutes of the incident but is cut short by officers Joseph Biebrich and Timothy Holt shutting their cameras off while Cavendish threatened to kill Jacob Smith. Biebrich and Holt did not respond to questions about why they turned their cameras off during the middle of the incident.

Cavendish told Smith, who is sitting in the driver’s seat with his hands up, “If I ever catch you back in fucking Santa Ana, this body-cam is gonna go in my car and I’m gonna fucking bash your fucking brains in, do you understand? I’m gonna put my gun in your fucking face and once you fucking reach for your waistband, I’m gonna fucking [incomprehensible], I’ll put your goddamn brains over the fucking sidewalk, and I’ll call your fucking mom to [incomprehensible]. Does that make sense?”

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It is unclear why Cavendish threatened to kill Smith as Peiffer was pulled out of the vehicle and thrown onto the car door by an unknown SAPD officer. Incident reports make no mention of weapons or violent behavior from Smith or Peiffer. Smith and Peiffer were unreachable through their attorney.

Cavendish did not respond to questions about the death threat and whether he was interviewed for an investigation into the incident that SAPD claimed happened.

SAPD Chief Robert Rodriguez did not respond to repeated requests for comment about the officers’ involved and if Cavendish is still on patrol.

The body worn camera footage released comes just as the police oversight commission is set to begin its work. Two weeks ago, the city appointed T. Jack Morse to serve as the commission director, yet at the same meeting, an effort to gut the commission’s powers was made public. The effort began in a secretive ad hoc committee that the city refused to release details about via a public records request. Under the potentially new rules for the commission, only after SAPD internal affairs completes its investigation is the commission allowed to review.

Morse said via email that “any misconduct by SAPD officers, if true, is concerning.” He could not speak specifically about how policy applies, stating that he has only been director for 2 weeks and does not have all of the information yet. He also cited the department’s body worn camera policy which has a relevant section that reads, “Unless otherwise authorized by this policy or approved by a supervisor, BWCs should remain activated until the call for service or law enforcement-related function has concluded.”

Current SAPD internal affairs (IA) commander, Jorge Lopez, is a former Strike Team member— the unit that SAPD revived as the Major Enforcement Team (MET) in 2020 with new members and the blessing of former Chief David Valentin. Lopez was made head of IA after Rodriguez was appointed chief of police. Rodriguez was head of IA in 2020 during the Culichi Town Incident where he allegedly covered up the sexual assault of a child by MET members.

Via phone interview, civil rights and criminal defense attorney Christian Contreras referred to Penal Code 422 when asked about when words become a criminal death threat. The penal code states:

“Any person who willfully threatens to commit a crime which will result in death or great bodily injury to another person, with the specific intent that the statement…is to be taken as a threat, even if there is no intent of actually carrying it out…and thereby causes that person reasonably to be in sustained fear for his…own safety…shall be punished by imprisonment in the county jail…or by imprisonment in the state prison.”

Contreras added “It’s a huge issue for officers to turn off their their body worn video in this instance because it prevents relevant evidence to be in the possession of the person who may be adverse to them, whether it’s in a criminal case or a civil case against them.”

In a third body worn camera video, Peiffer is seen handcuffed and placed into the back of a police car, however incident reports released did not mention a detainment or arrest. It is unclear what prompted SAPD to seemingly release Peiffer, but a source with knowledge of the incident said that the identity of Smith’s father — a Huntington Beach Police Department lieutenant — impacted the situation.

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While the city did settle the claims out, which means that no one is technically at fault, the total amount paid, according to Contreras, is “The city’s acknowledgment of serious misconduct on behalf of the officer.”

City council met on October 15, 2024 to discuss the legal claims. Sixteen days later, on October 31, 2024, the city manager signed both settlement agreements that had already been signed by all relevant parties. The separate settlement amounts were $225,000 and $192,500 for Peiffer and Smith, respectively.

Council member Hernandez expressed concern about liabilities stemming from SAPD incidents. “This is a department that you’ll regularly see on closed session agendas, related to having to payout settlements. My concern is that from 2010-2020, the $24.5 million that was paid out by police misconduct lawsuits— I worry that we may be surpassing those numbers from 2020 to 2030 as the police continue to violate the public’s trust and continue to break the law and engage in misconduct,” Hernandez said via phone interview.

SAPD Public Information Officer Natalie Garcia did not respond to questions about the incident forwarded to her.

The mayor and rest of city council did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

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Edit 12/24/25 11:02 AM: Morse’s attribution was inadvertently written twice. The second instance was removed.

Publisher’s note: The Santa Ana Police Department’s officer headshot photographs, names, badge numbers, payroll data are public record.

Within a month, Santa Ana Police Department (SAPD) officer Luis Casillas killed two people, one unarmed. In a recent third incident, Casillas is alleged to have taken part in the beating of a 15-year-old during an arrest, according to the child and his mother. The California Department of Justice (CA DOJ) is investigating the first incident, where officers Casillas and Isaac Ibarra killed Noe Rodriguez with a barrage of gunfire on December 1st, 2024. Rodriguez was unarmed.

On January 1st, 2025, Casillas killed again, shooting Henry Gonzalez Jr. who was holding his mother at knifepoint.

In the January shooting, Casillas and an unidentified SAPD officer approached the driveway where Gonzalez held his mother. According to edited body-worn camera footage published on SAPD’s youtube channel, Gonzalez’s mother repeatedly told officers that Gonzalez wanted to kill himself. As Casillas approached them at gunpoint, he repeatedly told Gonzalez to “let go of her” and that he was going to “get shot.”

According to SAPD, Casillas shot Gonzalez once in the head. He died on January 4th.

Police spokesperson Natalie Garcia stated in the video that officers also shot Gonzalez with a 40mm projectile after the headshot because Gonzalez was alive and still had the knife in his hand. The 40mm weapon is the same weapon used against protestors.

Garcia stated via email that both shooting incidents are under “active investigation” and that they are “limited in what [they] can share at this time to preserve the integrity of the review process.”

Garcia did not respond to a follow up question about whether it is typical for officers who are being investigated to remain on patrol. She also did not respond to a follow up question about a now-deleted video of a recent incident that involved the alleged beatdown of a 15 year-old that Casillas and an unidentified officer arrested.

Santa Ana city spokesperson Paul Eakins did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

Calls For Transparency And Accountability Grow

Casillas and Ibarra have become the focus of a community effort to hold the department accountable for its violent incidents. In recent months, statements calling for Casillas and Ibarra to be put on leave without pay have been circulated online, in-person and during council meeting public comments.

The Community Service Organization Orange County (CSO OC) has been on the forefront of this effort. They have organized protests calling for the jailing of Casillas and Ibarra. They have also utilized SAPD officer headshot photographs, released by SAPD through a public records request, to make sure community members know exactly who killed Rodriguez.

David Pulido, an organizer with CSO OC, stated via phone interview, “All of our demands and the direction that our struggle, our campaign takes is based on what the family wants.”

Pulido said via text later that their most recent demands are that Casillas and Ibarra be “fired from SAPD, and that the officers be jailed.”

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Their efforts have not gone unnoticed by the city’s largest political player: the Santa Ana Police Officers Association (SAPOA) and its controversial president, John Kachirisky.

On May 27th, 2025, the SAPOA sent a letter to the mayor, city council and posted it on social media. The letter referred to a “so-called ‘community organization’” transparency and accountability efforts as “manufactured outrage”, despite people protesting in solidarity with the calls to hold Casillas and Ibarra accountable.

The letter goes on to refer to the use of public records — names, photos and badge numbers of the cops — as “troubling” and implies that all of that is “personal information.”

The letter also took issue with Council member Johnathan Hernandez referring to killer cops as “judge, jury and executioner” at a recent council meeting in May, calling the language “inflammatory.”

The SAPOA’s letter made no mention of the various gang-like paraphernalia distributed by members of the SAPD that contain skulls, grim reapers, swords and scythes. The gang-like paraphernalia is also distributed to people who show loyalty to the SAPD or SAPOA1. The now-disbanded Major Enforcement Team (MET) that operated like a gang within the department had members sharing skull tattoos with the group’s initials. MET members, including now-Commander Oscar Lizardi, sexually assaulted a child at a local restaurant in 2020. The incident, known as The Culichi Town Incident, was allegedly covered up by SAPD’s current chief, Robert Rodriguez, who was then head of the internal affairs division.

These issues have consistently appeared in court documents filed by attorneys representing current and former SAPD officers who have allegedly faced retaliation within the department.

The SAPOA did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

Via phone interview, Hernandez stated, “For a city like Santa Ana to allow for accountability to take place, I think step one is making sure that those who are being investigated are not working in the public.”

Via email, council member Jessie Lopez said, “This is all deeply concerning. Thank you for making me aware.”

All other council members and the mayor did not respond to various emails requesting comment.

Despite numerous completed investigations about the shooting of unarmed individuals, the CA DOJ has declined to hold any police officers criminally culpable since the start of its AB 1506 efforts. Despite the CA DOJ’s active investigation — that could open the door to criminal prosecution of Casillas and Ibarra — SAPD has kept them working in the public.

It is unclear what Casillas’ role was in the hospitalization of the 15-year-old child during the arrest. After Inadvertent began asking for body-worn camera footage of the early-June incident, which SAPD had already posted publicly on their instagram account, the post was deleted and the city has refused to answer questions about it.

Update 6/23 9:38 P.M.: This article has been updated to include a comment from Council member Jessie Lopez

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Amezcua only responded on her personal phone number saying “Good morning, this is my personal phone. Pls [sic] use my city phone for city business. Thank you”

After two follow ups, the mayor still did not respond to the request for transparency.

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As federal agents took people from outside their homes, tackled people down in the streets and raided workplaces, the mayor was seemingly nowhere to be found. There were no immediate statements, updates or press conferences. Her first statement came on Monday. The first line read said that she did not support “unlawful behavior” but that she would always put “community first.”

It went on to state that city resources, included SAPD, would not be used to assist the federal agents in taking people. This is despite SAPD clearing protestors outside of the federal building, providing a passage for agents to drive their vehicles through.

While the extent of SAPD’s role, if any, in assisting the deportation efforts is not clear, Inadvertent will start by obtaining the mayor’s communications during the first days of the ICE terror and the protests.

On Friday, Inadvertent submitted a public records request for the mayor’s emails, texts and Signal messages related to the federal immigration raids and protests between Friday June 6 until June 11.

Part of the request reads:

• all of Mayor Amezcua's emails, texts, signal messages and responses to them related to the federal immigration enforcement actions and subsequent protests

  • keywords: ICE, protest, riot, immigration, enforcement, surveillance, first amendment, injuries, drone, mater dei, use of force, less lethal, destruction

  • Please first apply this request to conversations between the mayor, any city staff or council member, business owner, BID member, elected officials, city contractors.

Per the CA Supreme Court San Jose ruling, any writing pertaining to the conduct of the public's business is deemed a public record, even if it's on a personal device. I expect the city to follow the guidance that the CA Supreme Court issued in the San Jose ruling.

Given the worldwide attention the ongoing federal actions and protests, I ask that this request be construed as broadly as possible under the California Public Records Act and aforementioned court ruling.

I ask that the city provide the legally-mandated determination for this request within 10 days.

I ask that the city consider that the City of Los Angeles agreed that similar records are indeed public (see: Karen Bass' response to LA fire and the media's requests for her communications).

I ask that if any records deemed public have already been deleted using disappearing messages on Signal, the city provide notice of that in writing.

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On Friday, the city clerk acknowledged the request, which the mayor was copied on by Inadvertent. State law requires that they provide an update within 10 days.

This is a developing story and will be updated accordingly.

Just days after we first reported on Glendale’s collaboration with ICE/DHS, the city of Glendale canceled the contract they had with those federal agencies. The press release issued by the city yesterday evening stated, “After careful consideration, the City of Glendale has decided to end its agreement with U.S. Homeland Security/ICE to house federal immigration detainees.”

They went on to say that Glendale Police Department is “fully compliant” with state sanctuary law, a claim they were making prior to the groundbreaking reporting from us.

For this reason, Inadvertent is filing a public records request with the city of Glendale to obtain all internal communications about the ICE contract and their role in taking people from their communities.

We were only able to move so quickly on the story because of the paid subscribers that give us the resource to follow up on information received. The contract being canceled is a direct impact of this type of reporting.

If you were still unsure about what type of impact journalism can have, let this be the example. All paid subscriptions go to journalism that has real-world impacts.

Thank you.

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