Santa Ana city officials will take a very public look at what their police department did last June when they fired rubber bullets, projectiles and tear gas at peaceful protesters in downtown voicing opposition to ICE raids.
Recently, I joined Daniel Diaz of the Santanero newspaper in publicly calling out the city for ignoring questions about the protest response, where reporters like Diaz, several city council members and one county supervisor were fired upon along with peaceful protesters.
[Read: Santana: Were Santa Ana Police Justified in Firing On Peaceful Protesters?]
Last week, Santa Ana City Council members gave staff direction to create a report within 60 days and hold a public hearing on the issue – a police response that many residents and activists have long decried as excessive.
Most importantly, the public hearing will allow police officials to show residents what kinds of threats they faced and the rationale behind how they responded.
It also gives city officials a chance to publicly hold police officers accountable for their actions, effectively reviewing the response, policies and engaging police leaders with realtime feedback on community standards and expectations – a hallmark of any democracy.
In addition, a frank public conversation about how protests are handled in a large city like Santa Ana also presents a good opportunity for better dialogue and expectations between protest organizers and local police before, during and after demonstrations, especially where police have to use force.
Councilman Johnathan Hernandez, right, calls for de-escalation as Santa Ana police handcuff a woman after she questioned why more public speakers were not allowed into the chambers despite empty seats during a Santa Ana City Council meeting on Tuesday, June 17, 2025. Credit: JULIE LEOPO, Voice of OC
Authorizing the hearing – a simple council directive – was unusually ugly.
The debate prompted hard questioning about the effectiveness of the city’s police oversight commission – given that city council members took the hearing directly to their dais – ignoring the original direction from City Councilman Ben Vazquez to have the commission hold hearings on the issue.
City Councilman Phil Bacerra was critical of Vazquez for not working with his police oversight commissioner to have that panel host the hearing – questioning whether the majority of the commission members would have agreed to do so.
Indeed, the fact that Vazquez took the issue to the dais raises questions about whether the commission would have supported holding hearings.
While Vazquez’s motion to have the commission hold hearings seemed to have support on the city council dais, Mayor Valerie Amezcua voiced concerns about the commission holding the hearing – especially without her being present to ask questions.
City Attorney Sonya Carvalho publicly advised council members that if they chose to have the police oversight commission hold a hearing, they should stay out of it – not even attending in the audience out of respect for their advisory bodies.
“At the very least, I tell them to sit at the back of the room and not make faces or talk or participate,” she said.
Ultimately, City Councilwoman Jessie Lopez agreed with Amezcua, arguing that the issue was important enough to go straight to the city council instead of a city commission.
While Vazquez expressed concerns about the police review commission being passed over to handle the review, he voiced support for moving the hearing right to the city council dais.
Amezcua also voiced concerns about whether the city should have any kind of public hearing at all – noting that the city is facing some lawsuits over the police response. She also was resistant to police officials being asked any direct questions.
Yet Carvalho – backed up by City Manager Alvaro Nuñez – argued that city leaders should be able to effectively detail their response to the protests without jeopardizing the city’s legal position.
Last November, Santa Ana police officials spoke in general about their response to First Amendment protests in front of the city’s Police Oversight Commission, generally describing the department’s response in June as textbook.
At that meeting, Santa Ana Police Commander Garry Couso said the department’s approach aims to connect police with protest organizers early on, adding that police responses at protests target bad actors in the crowd as opposed to widescale responses from officers on the line.
Santa Ana Police Department forms a line during protests amid expanded immigration enforcement on June 9, 2025. Credit: JULIE LEOPO, Voice of OC Credit: JULIE LEOPO, Voice of OC
Back in June, Santa Ana Police also released a statement along with a video featuring select shots of unruly protesters to explain their declaration of an unlawful assembly, noting they had arrested 24 people over the course of six days.
Yet the police department’s version of events seems starkly at odds with what many Santa Ana residents saw and felt that night – including city council members.
“I was out there,” Lopez said in an interview last month.
“It was our own residents they were attacking and brutalizing,” she said of Santa Ana police, adding “You can’t tell them (residents) it didn’t happen to them.”
“I was fired on a couple of times,” Lopez continued, referring to the first day of protests on June 9, adding that a local school board trustee also got hit along with a woman with a baby stroller.
A Huntington Beach man recently filed a claim against the City of Santa Ana and the County of Orange after being shot in the head with projectiles by police forces during the June protests.
“It was approximately 10:15 pm when one individual on the far left of the crowd threw a firework at the law enforcement line,” the claim states.“Instead of targeting the one individual who posed the threat, the deputies and officers responded by opening fire at everyone in the crowd with their less-lethal projectiles.”
To read a copy of the claim, click here.
Vazquez also experienced something very different from what police officials told Santa Ana’s oversight commissioners about their response.
“I thought they overdid it,” Vazquez told me last month. “They were shooting in my direction. But I didn’t get hit.”
His colleague, Councilman Jonathan Hernandez, also disputes the presentation given to the oversight commission.
“I was on the ground that day,” Hernandez said. “SAPD were the agitators. They did escalate violence.”
Orange County Supervisor Vicente Sarmiento – a former Santa Ana mayor – largely backed up other eyewitness accounts.,
“I witnessed first-hand the excessive and unnecessary use of force by federal and local law enforcement on peaceful protesters,” Sarmiento stated last month.
“We are hopeful that the use-of-force incidents in Santa Ana will be investigated,” Sarmiento added, “in order to ensure accountability and transparency and regain the public’s trust.”
Related