{"id":284315,"date":"2026-04-24T20:28:52","date_gmt":"2026-04-24T20:28:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/284315\/"},"modified":"2026-04-24T20:28:52","modified_gmt":"2026-04-24T20:28:52","slug":"santa-ana-pd-grilled-on-its-response-to-anti-ice-protests-last-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/284315\/","title":{"rendered":"Santa Ana PD grilled on its response to anti-ICE protests last year"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

With the smoke long having cleared from tear gas canisters fired on anti-ICE protests last June, the Santa Ana Police Department offered a public review of its enforcement actions.<\/p>\n

Spurred by masked federal agents carrying out immigration sweeps in Santa Ana<\/a>, four protests swelled the city\u2019s streets between June 9 and June 14.<\/p>\n

According to a report<\/a> submitted on Tuesday by Santa Ana Police Chief Robert Rodriguez, his department fired more than 200 less-lethal 40mm projectiles, about 60 bean bags and 35 chemical agent munitions during the protests.<\/p>\n

Twenty-seven protesters were arrested, including four felony arrests. Five arrestees reported injuries. Three Santa Ana police officers and seven assisting officers from outside agencies also reported injuries.<\/p>\n

The police response, which protesters flooded council chambers last year to denounce, cost the city nearly $400,000.<\/p>\n

From the onset, Rodriguez acknowledged at the April 22 Santa Ana City Council meeting that the high-level review was limited in scope due to pending civil litigation and internal affairs investigations.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe department is constrained in the level of detail we can provide at this time,\u201d he said. \u201cThese limitations are necessary to preserve the integrity of the investigative process, ensure compliance with applicable laws, including personnel confidentiality, but more importantly, to protect the city\u2019s legal position.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition to one lawsuit, Santa Ana has received four tort claims that could turn into lawsuits.<\/p>\n

Councilmembers Jessie Lopez, Johnathan Ryan Hernandez and Ben Vazquez were on scene at the June 9 protest, which began with demonstrators gathering outside of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services federal building in downtown Santa Ana before Santa Ana PD declared an unlawful assembly around 8:30 p.m. <\/p>\n

Rodriguez acknowledged that Santa Ana PD responded to the federal building at the request of the U.S. Attorney\u2019s Office, a detail City Atty. Sonia Carvalho expanded on later in the council meeting.<\/p>\n

She recounted being told on the second of two phone calls that if Santa Ana PD did not provide security, federal resources would be brought in.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had a discussion about what that might look like in terms of safety for our community and what that would mean to people in our community,\u201d Carvalho said. \u201cA decision was made at that point.\u201d<\/p>\n

President Donald Trump ultimately deployed the National Guard<\/a> to downtown Santa Ana the day after the June 9 protest.<\/p>\n

\"National <\/p>\n

National Guardsmen stationed in front of the Ronald Reagan Federal Building and U.S. Courthouse in Santa Ana last year.<\/p>\n

(Gabriel San Rom\u00e1n)<\/p>\n

Cmdr. Jorge Lopez, who presented the report to council, said Santa Ana PD did not fire chemical agents into the crowd during the daytime protest, but did use such munitions later at night.<\/p>\n

Councilmember Jessie Lopez asked tough questions about a \u201cline of control\u201d formed by Santa Ana police officers during the protest.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m trying to understand what \u2026 level of threat \u2026 you perceived from people like myself that were there that day in order for them to move forward towards us,\u201d she asked.<\/p>\n

Rodriguez responded that his department tried to create distance between the community and federal officers \u2014 a move aimed at ensuring public safety.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhose public safety are we centering if you\u2019re coming towards the crowd and you\u2019re creating a line to protect the other agents?\u201d Lopez asked.<\/p>\n

Rodriguez argued that if his department didn\u2019t respond to the call, the federal government would have sent another law enforcement agency to take over the scene.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s also for the safety of our community,\u201d he said, \u201cbecause if they\u2019re in middle of an engagement with federal officers, the best thing is distance.\u201d<\/p>\n

He recounted an incident earlier this year where Santa Ana PD was not on scene at a federal building protest and a protester lost an eye<\/a> after a federal agent fired a projectile from a few feet away.<\/p>\n

Hernandez, who said eight pepper balls struck him in the earlier fray, posed a number of critical questions.<\/p>\n

\u201cDo we have a de-escalation policy?\u201d he asked. \u201cI looked at our policies and I didn\u2019t see a section on de-escalation, but de-escalation is listed here as the first bullet point. I\u2019d like to know, what are these officers referencing in terms of de-escalation?\u201d<\/p>\n

Hernandez then asked why no evidence showed protesters throwing water bottles or bricks at law enforcement.<\/p>\n

Rodriguez said that officers de-escalate based on a threshold of what actions protesters engage in.<\/p>\n

A presentation by Cmdr. Jorge Lopez included video of a person doing burnouts on a mini bike while another man climbed a traffic light pole. The video was labeled \u201cFreedom of Speech?\u201d<\/p>\n

Rodriguez held back on showing any more evidence to council.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have plenty of videos of actual law violations that we also didn\u2019t include, also because of \u2026 ongoing civil litigation,\u201d he said. \u201cOur officers take into consideration the totality of the circumstances [and] public safety also.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vazquez wound the discussion down by asking the chief if the department could learn any lessons from the extraordinary circumstances Santa Ana faced last June \u2014 a question Carvalho urged caution in responding to, as the city faces a litigation.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can always look at what we did [well], what we could have done better, and what we did wrong,\u201d Rodriguez said generally of policing. \u201cWe\u2019ll evaluate once all these processes have been completed and I\u2019m sure there will be some takeaways.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With the smoke long having cleared from tear gas canisters fired on anti-ICE protests last June, the Santa…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":284316,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,165,164,121977,1409,179,121979,121978,6246,58888,2624,2058,11276,14830,3607,121976,5041,5050],"class_list":{"0":"post-284315","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-anaheim","8":"tag-anaheim","9":"tag-anaheim-headlines","10":"tag-anaheim-news","11":"tag-assisting-officer","12":"tag-city","13":"tag-community","14":"tag-councilmembers-jessie-lopez","15":"tag-de-escalation-policy","16":"tag-department","17":"tag-jorge-lopez","18":"tag-june","19":"tag-protest","20":"tag-protester","21":"tag-rodriguez","22":"tag-safety","23":"tag-santa-ana-pd","24":"tag-santa-ana-police-department","25":"tag-video"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=284315"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284315\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/284316"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=284315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=284315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=284315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}