Santa Ana Police Department reports say officers followed the law during anti-ICE protests. Eyewitnesses tell a different story

The protest on Monday, June 9, started small.

Nathan Tran, a Garden Grove native and community organizer with the Party for Socialism and Liberation, joined a few dozen people outside the federal building in Santa Ana, a local epicenter for immigration enforcement actions that were ramping up across Southern California.

Despite the small crowd, Tran said he saw federal agents wearing riot gear, standing at the ready. He said they were armed with crowd control weapons and rifles with live ammunition.

By the evening, the crowd had swelled to around 500 people and the protest had moved to the downtown Santa Ana area. Officers with the Santa Ana Police Department formed a skirmish line. Tran watched from Sasscer Park, around 30 feet away from the main crowd, as tensions rose.

Police suddenly cleared the crowd with “barrages of rubber bullets, pepper balls, flash bangs, tear gas,” Tran said, without warning or apparent provocation.

He said people in the crowd responded by hurling back water bottles and fireworks.

Tran turned to leave.

Then, “ I feel this like sensation, like I got punched really hard in the jaw,” Tran said. He had been hit in the face with a less-lethal projectile.

The impact left a deep gash on Tran’s chin. Doctors at UCI Medical Center told him they could see the tendons connecting his jaw muscles.

LAist reviewed his discharge report. Tran was prescribed an antibiotic and recommended to remove his sutures within a week. The diagnosis: “Facial laceration, first encounter. Injury due to rubber bullet.”

How we got here

In the wake of George Floyd’s death in 2020 and concerns about the overly aggressive police response to the protests that followed, California lawmakers took steps to protect residents exercising their first amendment rights.

They did so by passing Assembly Bill 48, a 2021 law that bans the indiscriminate use of force against civilians at protests. Law enforcement agencies now have to take several steps including deescalation tactics like dispersal orders before they can use these military equipment such as foam bullets and tear gas. And the law says “projectiles shall not be aimed at the head, neck, or any other vital organs.”

The law also requires agencies to make public reports about their use of force at protests.

The report about June 9 states that officers only fired at noncompliant individuals, and there were no known injuries resulting from their use of force.

Santa Ana said in a June news release that officers responded to the protests on June 9 and the following days “in strict accordance with the law.”

But Tran and other protestors say Santa Ana Police broke the law during those protests. The ACLU SoCal also sent a letter to the police department detailing how they broke AB 48.

Tran said he is considering legal action.

Lawsuits may be the only recourse for Tran and other protestors, because despite the attempts by California lawmakers to rein in law enforcement agencies, there’s no mechanism in place for enforcing the law.

Public reports about protest response provide some measure of transparency, but the reports rely on law enforcement’s own narrative about what took place during protests. Those reports are supposed to be filed to the California Department of Justice, but there is no independent fact-checking process.

In the case of Santa Ana, for example, official version of events do not align with eyewitness accounts or video footage reviewed by LAist.

What the reports say

According to AB 48, law enforcement agencies cannot use projectiles at protests unless a life is threatened or to bring “an objectively dangerous and unlawful situation” under control.

And even then, police officers can only use foam bullets and tear gas after they have used “deescalation techniques,” such as declaring an unlawful assembly. Officers also have to announce several warnings in different languages, give people ample time to leave the area, take caution not to hit bystanders, medical personnel, journalists, or other unintended targets and provide medical assistance to those injured.

Santa Ana officials say police fully complied with the law during the June protests. In the AB 48 reports for June 9, Santa Ana PD said they tried deescalation techniques including calling for additional officers, issuing verbal commands and attempting to “gain voluntary compliance.”

The report also says police officers used projectiles and chemical agents like tear gas only after individuals threw objects including “illegal fireworks, rocks, bricks, concrete, glass bottles, and other unidentified projectiles, directly at law enforcement personnel.”

“In response to targeted assaults, Santa Ana Police Officers deployed 40mm direct impact sponge rounds and CS chemical agents only when specific individuals engaged in violent acts were identified. At no point were kinetic energy projectiles fired indiscriminately into the crowd of protesters,” the police wrote in their report for June 9. Similar language was used for June 10, 11 and 14.

The Orange County Sheriff’s Department would also join the Santa Ana police that night. In their AB 48 report, the Sheriff’s Department wrote they “formed skirmish lines with SAPD and worked to move the crowd east. During this effort, individuals in the crowd threw water bottles, rocks, and fireworks mortars/explosives at deputies. OCSD deployed kinetic energy projectiles and chemical agents in response to those specific threats.” According to their report, they deployed 23 rounds of pepperballs, four rounds of the foam bullets and one bean bag round.

What the community says

People who were at the protests tell a different story. Tran says he was hit in the face with a kinetic energy projectile while observing the protest from a distance, and says there was no threat to officers beforehand — or deescalation tactics or warning from police.

Even public officials were caught in the fray and have criticized the police response to the protests.

Councilmember Johnathan Hernandez said he was shot at eight times with projectiles as he marched alongside residents.

 "I still have the bruises on my back from the eight shots that my own officers fired at me,” he said at a June council meeting. “I still have the holes in my black shirt that my own officers from this city fired at me. I had no weapons on me.”

Hernandez said that the police “would shoot tear gas into the direction that they wanted people to flee, and when your back was turned, they would shoot you.”

Daniel Diaz, who runs the local, community publication The Santanero, captured livestream videos which show the Santa Ana Police firing foam bullets at a group of about 100 protesters standing at an intersection holding signs and chanting on June 12. In the video, the police do not appear to give warnings before firing the shots. In his video, Diaz is heard recounting that the bullets were also cracking residential windows.

When LAist reached out to the Santa Ana Police Department about the discrepancies in the report and the conflicting narratives from eye witnesses, the department declined to comment.

ACLU SoCal sent a letter to Chief Robert Rodriguez on June 13 claiming that Santa Ana police violated the law while responding to protests.

Reisberg with the ACLU SoCal told LAist their letter “was based on reports that our office received in the form of intakes and on coverage in the news that was showing that SAPD's use of these so-called less lethal weapons was clearly violating state law.”

Reisberg said that under the law, police have to take steps to deescalate the situation first.

“You can just see from the videos that they weren't doing that,” Reisberg said.

The Santa Ana Police Department replied to the ACLU’s letter, Reisberg said, stating “they acted reasonably.”

“But the state law requires a whole lot more than just acting reasonably,” he said.

So who oversees the police?

The discrepancies between the police reports about the protests, eye witness accounts and video footage reveal a flaw in California’s protest laws, policing experts told LAist.

Law enforcement agencies are required to make public reports about their use of force at protests. But many don’t, and others like Santa Ana Police Department file reports that protesters say don’t capture what went down.

Former Assemblymember Cristina Garcia, a lead sponsor on Assembly Bill 48, said it should be up to the California Department of Justice to make sure law enforcement agencies are complying with the law.

The DOJ doesn’t see it that way. The law requires the DOJ to compile and publish a list of law enforcement websites where agencies provide public access to incident reports and detail how they are following AB 48, according to agency spokesperson Elissa Perez but it doesn’t ask the agency to do much else by way of enforcement.

“The bill [AB 48] does not include requirements for DOJ to review, audit, or enforce law enforcement agency requirements,” Perez wrote to LAist.

According to the California constitution, it is the duty of the Attorney General to enforce state laws.

Another enforcement mechanism members of the public have are lawsuits. The process is long and tedious, but it can be effective. Settlements are typically paid with general fund taxpayer dollars — the money typically earmarked for public parks and public works.

In 2020, the Voice of OC reported that taxpayer funds were used to pay around $24 million to settle lawsuits and legal claims against the Santa Ana Police Department from 2011 to 2020.

While people can share instances of police misconduct with the ACLU, Reisberg has another idea for members of the public who are worried about excessive policing of protesters: put city leaders on notice.

“ Community pressure is essential and there has been amazing community pressure in Santa Ana at the city council. Basically people standing up and saying to their elected representatives, this is not acceptable,” Reisberg said.

How to keep tabs on Santa Ana

• Read tips on how to get involved in your local government.
• The Santa Ana City Council meets on the first and third Tuesdays of the month.
• You can check out the Santa Ana City Council full calendar here and learn how to submit a public comment. 

LAist summer reporting intern Kahani Malhotra contributed to this report.