SANTA ANA, Calif. — An independent police oversight firm has been hired by the city of Santa Ana to investigate allegations that an elite police unit is behaving like a gang — sharing skull tattoos and using heavy-handed tactics.
Among the allegations is a report that an unidentified, off-duty member of the Major Enforcement Team touched the buttock of a teenage girl at a Mexican restaurant in August 2020.
In a prepared statement and a video released on YouTube, Police Chief David Valentin announced late Monday that he has retained Mike Gennaco and his Playa del Rey-based OIR Group to look into what he called “baseless” allegations against the unit.
“We investigate any allegations of wrongdoing and hold officers accountable to our department policies and the law,” Valentin said. He added that the claims of gang activity in the team, as well as the touching allegation, were found by internal investigations to be unfounded, but he ordered the independent probe in the spirit of transparency and accountability.
Valentin described the allegations as “baseless attacks against some of the most dedicated members of our Police Department.”
The independent audit is mostly in response to a story last month in the blog KnockLA alleging the Major Enforcement Team, or MET, was a police gang created and protected by the chief, while investigations into complaints of excessive force and other misconduct were essentially whitewashed.
The story focused on a late-night incident Aug. 9, 2020 at the Culichitown restaurant on Bristol Street in Santa Ana.
Incident reports, body camera footage and 911 logs first obtained by KnockLA, and then by the Southern California News Group, show that police were called at 1:25 a.m. by the family of two teenage girls. The girls complained that they were harassed while walking to the restroom by unidentified men at a nearby table.
The family said they were told by restaurant workers the men were undercover police officers. The blog identified the men as five off-duty members of the MET.
One of the girls is shown on the bodycam footage telling an officer that a man at the nearby table touched her right buttock with an open hand for four seconds while she was walking back from the restroom, and said, “Let’s go.”
The girl told the officer that she was unsure whether the man touched her intentionally or by accident. She described him as wearing a white shirt with black lettering and said she wanted to file a complaint.
The report, however, said there was “no crime” and labeled the complaining parties as “415,” police code for disturbing the peace, and “390,” the code for intoxicated.
Valentin said in the YouTube video that the incident was investigated by the department after receiving an anonymous complaint seven months later. The investigation found that the physical description given by the girl did not match or resemble any of the officers.
Valentin described the incident as “a brief physical contact in a crowded area.”
The KnockLA blog also pointed to the team’s matching skull tattoos. Members also carry coins imprinted with the Latin words for “let them hate, so long as they fear.”
“Neither of these activities is illegal and can represent a form of camaraderie among members of law enforcement, the military and other groups who work closely in dangerous situations,” Valentin said in his video message.
Gennaco is a former civil rights attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice and formerly headed Los Angeles County’s Office of Independent Review. He said this week he didn’t know how long the probe would take.
“We’re still getting our arms around the issues,” Gennaco said. “We’ll see where the evidence goes.”
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