Santa Ana’s Police Officer Association, which often spends heavily on local elections, is alleging harassment against an elected official and a reporter as questions increase about the police response to recent protests and overall accountability.
The association – the union for the police department – is demanding reporter Ben Camacho stop reaching out to its members to ask them questions or face legal actions.
Separately, City Councilman Johnathan Hernandez – a staunch critic of the police union – could be censured this Fall after three police officers filed harassment complaints against him earlier this year.
It’s unclear exactly what the specific allegations are against Hernandez because city staff have refused to release the complaints, but it comes after the councilman publicly criticized the police department’s use of tear gas and rubber bullets against anti-ICE protestors in June.
In an Aug. 27 cease and desist letter, Ferrone Law Group – the law firm that represents the police union – demanded Camacho, who frequently writes stories about police accountability and the union, stop any and all communication between union members.
“Recently you have begun to harass and attempt to intimidate certain members of the SAPOA, by different means. You have telephoned certain officers and emailed them demanding they answer your questions and to respond to your frivolous requests. This must stop,” reads the letter.
“If you fail to abide by this demand, SAPOA will be forced through your actions to seek legal remedy against you.”
Camacho said it shows a rocky relationship between the police association and the press.
“I cannot imagine that sound people sat in a room and said, ‘hey, let’s send this reporter a cease and desist.’ Not only is that terrible legal advice, it just goes against everything that makes the press strong,” he said. “It goes against the First Amendment.”
He also said there is a culture of secrecy at Santa Ana City Hall and that he rarely hears back from city officials including city spokesman Paul Eakins, adding that city officials and police departments increase transparency when they respond to reporter questions.
“I don’t think that our government should operate in secrecy. I think that as journalists, we have an obligation to hold the powerful accountable and that involves asking hard questions,” Camacho said in a Thursday phone interview
“I think it’s a coward move to avoid reporters’ questions.”
To read Camacho’s story on the letter, click here.
In a Tuesday Instagram post, the association said Camacho “has shown a pattern of seeking out personal information about our officers” and claimed he shares that information with others.
The association also claimed Camacho and “his allies” are carrying out a “coordinated smear campaign” for political power.
“We won’t sit silently while our members—and their spouses and children—are put at risk by the reckless actions of a blogger trying to play journalist. There is a line between free speech and targeted harassment. ” reads the association’s post.
David Loy, legal director of the First Amendment Coalition, said the letter was “unusual” and that if all Camacho did was text, email and call officers, that action is protected under the First Amendment.
“It is legitimate for a reporter to seek comment from that officer. The officer need not respond, but it’s perfectly within the bounds of the First Amendment to make reasonable attempts,” Loy said in an interview last week. “I don’t see this as remotely close to the line of prohibited harassment.”
He also raised concerns about these types of letters having a “chilling effect” and that there was no justification for barring Camacho from speaking to any law enforcement officers.
“To put it simply, journalism is not a crime,” Loy said. “Actual genuine harassment can happen. But this isn’t even remotely close to the line.”
On Thursday, Camacho’s attorney, Shakeer Rahman, sent a response back to the Ferrone Law Group calling the police union’s demands “ridiculous.”
“There is no lawful basis to gag a person from ever communicating with government officials, let alone from communicating with an entire police force. That would be unconstitutional,” Rahman wrote.
“It is a bedrock journalistic practice to offer a person an opportunity to comment on forthcoming news reporting about them.”
Hernandez said the union’s letter to Camacho is disturbing.
“This is an attack on a reporter who has forced the city to improve their best practices, and this is an attack on a reporter who is forcing this department to right their wrongs,” he said in a Tuesday phone interview.
“Any member of the public should be concerned when you see a police association sending a cease and desist to a journalist and attempting to silence them.”
Hernandez also denied any validity to harassment allegations against him.
He also said one of the police officers who filed the complaint said his cousin, Brandon Lopez, had a gun when Anaheim police officers shot and killed him in 2021. Lopez was unarmed.
The other two officers, Hernandez said, were involved in the police killing of Noe Rodriguez at the end of last year – a police shooting that sparked public demands for accountability this year and is currently under investigation by the state attorney general’s office.
He said that two filed complaints against him because he said there were “killer cops” in the police department and after he interacted with them at a park opening in June where one of the officers refused to give him his badge number and name.
Santa Ana Police Association President John Kachirsky said Hernandez needs to treat officers with more respect.
“As a law enforcement union, we fully respect Councilmember Hernandez’s right to due process. However, as a public official, he has a sworn duty and obligation to conduct himself professionally and to treat everyone – including the police officers who work tirelessly to protect the community – with dignity and respect. This was affirmed by a council vote of 6-0,” Kachirsky said in a Tuesday statement.
The complaints come after Hernandez this summer spoke out against changes to the police oversight commission to dial back its power and publicly criticized the police department’s response to protests against federal deportation sweeps.
At a meeting in June, Hernandez also publicly asked for information on how many non-lethal projectiles and chemical agents were fired and thrown at protestors and said police officers have insulted and threatened him.
Councilman Benjamin Vazquez said the cease and desist letter sent to Camacho was “just sad.”
“I don’t understand why they expect a journalist not to speak to any of their members,” Vazquez said. “I don’t know what they’re trying to cover up.”
Councilwoman Jessie Lopez, who in the past defeated a police union recall effort against her, said if they can’t take the questions, maybe they are not cut out for public service.
“They don’t like members of the public – our own constituents – asking questions. They don’t like council members asking questions. They certainly don’t like when I ask questions. They always have the mayor shut down that line of questioning. They don’t like the press asking questions. They don’t want the city to audit them,” she said in a Tuesday phone interview about the police union.
“It’s ridiculous that they get to dictate who can ask a question and who can’t.”
Mayor Valerie Amezcua, Councilmembers Phil Bacerra and Thai Viet Phan did not respond to requests for comment Tuesday.
Penaloza declined to comment on the complaints against Hernandez or the letter sent to Camacho – saying he hadn’t seen it.
Complaints Against a POA Critic
At the Aug. 19 city council meeting, City Attorney Sonia Carvalho announced that elected officials voted 6-0 behind closed doors to direct her to advise them about a censure process against Hernandez at their Oct. 7 meeting.
Hernandez was absent from the vote.
Later that night, he spoke out against the vote, calling it a political move.
“I’m very troubled that politics may be taking its course here. I want to implore the members of the public that accountability does not mean that you are anti-police. To be pro-justice does not mean that you are anti-police,” Hernandez said at the Aug. 19 meeting
“I want to be on the record that I do not support harassing our officers. I do not support disrespecting our officers. I support treating them with respect, dignity, and the same applies for them, treating our community with that.”
The police union spent over $50,000 against his reelection campaign last year.
In July, Mayor Amezcua publicly said three Santa Ana police officers filed hostile workplace environment and harassment complaints against Hernandez and asked the city attorney to investigate the complaints.
“I am especially concerned because he has been investigated before and was found to have behaved inappropriately. What will it take to make sure he is not violating the law or employee rights,” Amezcua said at the July 15 meeting.
“Families are afraid. They’re afraid for their safety, for their children, for their home, because a particular Councilman has posted on his social media calling our officers terrorists and murderers.”
On Aug. 21, Voice of OC filed a public records request for the complaints against Hernandez and any investigation reports into the matter, but city staff denied the request the same day arguing that the public interest was better served by not disclosing the records.
They also pointed to confidentiality and privacy rules.
Hernandez said the city should release the complaints.
“The city has already concluded that there was no wrongdoing on my end. Furthermore, there’s body cam of the interaction,” he said.
Councilman Vazquez said he’d reviewed the complaints and that they focused on Hernandez’s social media posts criticizing the police department.
“They’re alleging he harasses them because of what he posts online,” Vazquez said. “It’s his First Amendment right.”
Vazquez also said he supported the censure talks because he wanted to give Hernandez a chance to publicly defend himself and that other options, such as a personnel investigation, would take much more time.
Lopez said the complaints are being investigated and it’s a personnel matter, adding everything on and off the dais is political in Santa Ana.
t’s not the first complaint against Hernandez.
Last year, city hired investigators found enough evidence to sustain allegations that Hernandez violated the city charter by interfering with city staff’s work to plan the Juneteenth celebration, the Chicano Heritage Festival and Indigenous People’s day.
At the time, city officials contemplated censuring Hernandez but ultimately decided not to take action against him.
He wasn’t the only one investigated.
City hired investigators also concluded that they couldn’t sustain allegations that Amezcua created a hostile workplace environment for former city manager Kristine Ridge and interfered with her work.
That conclusion came a year after a majority of officials, including Amezcua, voted to pay Ridge over $600,000 in taxpayer dollars to settle a claim in which Ridge also alleges a pressure campaign by elected officials on behalf of the police union to get her to boost former union president Gerry Serrano’s pay and pension.
It’s a claim that the city resisted handing over to the press for six months until Camacho obtained it.
Meanwhile, Camacho said he will not stop covering the Santa Ana police department.
“They can expect me to be continuing to talk to Santa Ana police officers. It’s my job to do so. People always have the chance to say, ‘hey, don’t reach out to me’ or ‘hey, I don’t want to talk’ but in these cases that has never been told to me,” he said.
“I’m absolutely not going to be stopping coverage of anything that I’m doing.”
Hosam Elattar is a Voice of OC reporter. Contact him at helattar@voiceofoc.org or on Twitter @ElattarHosam.