Local media reporting on the Santa Ana Police Commission’s January 8 meeting focused on $1.2 million in settlement payments for three collisions over four years in which off-dirty officers were driving police vehicles.
While that merits further examination, more interesting was the outbreak of common sense during the discussion of a report on the police department’s pursuit policy (from which the settlement information emerged), and what it says about certain commission members.
Deputy Chief Roland Andrade and commission staff took commission members through a PowerPoint presentation, which presented data from 313 vehicle pursuits from 2022 through 2025.
Commissioner Amalia Mejia zeroed in on the percentage of pursuit that stemmed from attempting to pull someone over for violations of the California Vehicle Code, and the percentage of vehicle pursuits that end in collisions.
“It is a bit concerning, despite not knowing the specific details of the vehicle code [emphasis added] that 64% of the pursuits are because of vehicle codes,” Mejia opined. “And if we just look at 2025 last year, that’s about 78% actually, of the vehicle pursuits were because of vehicle codes.”
Note Mejia’s phrasing. In her telling, the pursuits are because of the Vehicle Code, not because of motorists violating the Vehicle Code.
Mejia was appointed to the commission by infamously anti-police Councilman Johnathan Hernandez.
Mejia also harped on the fact that 30% of vehicle pursuits resulted in collisions – despite being informed that 30% is the national average. Since the statewide average is 20%, then she concluded something must be wrong at SAPD. She didn’t question the 20% figure, exhibited zero curiosity about the divergence between the state and national averages, and demanded more data from staff so she can “solve” this alleged problem.
It never seemed to occur to Mejia that pursuits are driver-initiated. If a person pulls over, there’s no pursuit. Drivers who refuse to pull over when police hit the lights and siren tend to be pursued, since that refusall is inherently suspicious.
Instead, it was clear Mejia’s interest was hunting for some data hook to use as a club to bludgeon to police for the behavior of reckless motorists.
Commissioner Carlos Perea, for his part, requested that staff come back with data on the race of each individual involved in those 313 pursuits. Perea was appointed by left-wing Councilman Ben Vazquez, another outspoken (and frequently fact-free) police critic. He refuses to say the Pledge of Allegiance at the start of commission meetings, despite being a vocal advocate for allowing non-citizens to vote in Santa Ana elections.
Perea, who works for the radical National Day Laborers Organizing Network (NDLON), immediately injected race in the presentation.
“So, I am adding my comment on requesting having information or the breakdown of the recent of pursuits by race,” Perea told staff.
Keep in mind, Perea’s day job is running The Harbor Institute, a front group controlled and funded by NDLON. The Harbor Institute’s animating philosophy is that racism permeates immigration and law enforcement in particular and American society in general. He has a professional interest in securing statistics he can use to further that narrative. Where does his job running The Harbor Institute end and his commissioner duties begin?
Commissioner Gabriel Castillo-Laughton – Councilmember Jessie Lopez’s appointee – also piled on with his own requests for staff to produce more data.
Finally, thankfully, there was an outbreak of common sense, in the person of Keith Carpenter, the commission chair and appointee of Councilmember Thai Viet Phan.
“In my opinion it’s data overload. We get all this data, and then what do we do with it?” observed Carpenter.
“Unless we’re reviewing a policy, that data just becomes data. We’ve requested so much data in the past and it just compiles.”
Carpenter politely illuminate the silliness of obsessing over how many pursuits resulted from vehicle code violations.
”Quite frankly, if most of the, the pursuits are CVCs, it makes sense, because they’re people driving cars and they don’t pull over.,” Carpenter continued.
“So I don’t care if it’s an infraction or not – if the person doesn’t stop, they initiate the pursuit. So you can’t say, ‘Okay, it’s a CVC violation, it’s a broken tail light, I’m gonna let it go.’ That’s negligence of duty,” said Carpenter.
The obvious common sense of Carpenter’s observations were lost on Mejia and Perea, who remained laser focused on their bugaboos of race and the notion that its optional for motorists to pull over if a police officer indicates they do so.
Carpenter’s points about the relentless request for data are also well taken. It’s all too common for councilmembers and commissioners – and not just in Santa Ana — to bombard staff with direction and requests for data in order to persuade any member of the public who is paying attention that they have something between their ears.
It’s a good and proper for the commission to finally begin hearing valid complaints from residents. And topics such as taxpayer-funded settlements for collisions involving off-duty officers in department vehicles is a legitimate line of inquiry.
However, Mejia and Perea ought not use their positions as platforms for their political activism. They have already crossed ethical lines by actively encouraging anti-Israel protesters to file complaints against Santa Ana police officers. Their behavior since does not inspire public confidence in their ability to objective and fairly render judgment on cases that come before them.
