At its April 4 meeting, the Santa Ana City Council will decide whether or not to appoint Fernando Delgado, a left-wing activist who supports abolishing the police, to the city’s recently established Police Oversight Commission.
Delgado, who is nominated by Councilman Johnathan Hernandez, routinely denigrates law enforcement on his social media accounts as intrinsically oppressive, calling them “pigs” and using anti-police hashtags such as #ACAB (All Cops Are Bastards) and #Fuck12 (slang for “f— the police”).
Delgado’s nomination hit a snag at the March 21 council meeting after Councilman Phil Bacerra called attention to Delgado’s extreme social media posts assailing the police, as well as one celebrating the imprisonment of American pilots during the Vietnam war.
While Councilwoman Thai Phan said she found Delgado’s sharing of that image disturbing, she moved to have the item continued toa future council meeting where the anti-police activist could publicly explain himself.
Phan is the only publicly undecided councilmember when it comes to Delgado’s nomination. Even if she ultimately supports him, it’s unlikely to be enough. According to the council agenda item, affirmative votes from five of the seven councilmembers are necessary to confirm Delgado, and Mayor Valerie Amezcua and Councilmembers Bacerra and David Penaloza stated their opposition to his nomination at the March 21 council meeting.
Delgado is the campaigns director of OCCORD, a left-wing social justice advocacy group that focuses on influencing city government in Anaheim and Santa Ana. He was nominated by Santa Ana Councilman Johnathan Hernandez, himself an often strident critic of law enforcement.
Delgado’s deep-seated hostility toward law enforcement is evident on his personal Instagram account, as well as Abolition Now OC’s Instagram account, which Delgado appears to manage.
Neither has been updated since they become a complication for Delgado’s nomination to the Police Oversight Commission.
One of the posts was of a famous 1967 photo of a Communist militiawoman holding a captured American pilot, Air Force Major Dewey Waddell, at bayonet point. Waddell had been been shot down during a combat mission over North Vietnam, and would spend the next six years as a prisoner of war in the infamous Hanoi Hilton.
The photo was part of an Instagram “reel” shared by Delgado and originally posted on a Communist IG account called The.Mirror. The reel celebrated International Women’s Day with photos of female PLO fighters, female Communist Vietnamese guerillas and the famous German Communist revolutionary Rosa Luxembourg.
The Waddell photo was staged by journalists from communist East Germany, who directed Waddell to walk up and down the rice paddy and to ‘Keep your head down and don’t say anything.’ The photo and video were used for propaganda purposes by the Communist Bloc.
Bacerra also pointed to a photo Delgado posted on Abolition Now OC Instagram, quoting rapper Bambu DePistola (a former gang member, Marine Corps veteran, and communist activist) rapping “Fuck A Cop” – which Delgado praises in a comment as “an abolitionist anthem.”
Delgado is steeped in revolutionary ideology. For example, in this IG post, Delgado spurns democratic socialists like Justin Trudeau while holding up Karl Marx and Marxist-Leninist revolutionaries Thomas Sankara, Rosa Luxembourg and Angela Davis as the type of “leaders” necessary “in order ofr people to live dignified lives in our society.”
Rosa Luxembourg (who was killed in the Communist Spartacist uprising in Germany in 1919) dismissed the idea of peaceful political change, writing that ” and declaring that “socialism means overthrowing the ruling classes with all the brutality that the proletariat is capable of deploying in its struggle.”
Thomas Sankara was the Marxist-Leninist strongman of the West African nation of Burkina Faso from 1983 until his assassination in 1987. Sankara little regard for political freedom and set up a Communist security state along Cuban lines.
Angela Davis was a dedicated and advocate of political violence who wound up on the FBI’s most wanted list, causing her to seek refuge in Castro’s Cuba for a few years. Naturally, she ultimately became a tenured University of California professor.
Is Delgado’s Anti-Police Ideology Compatible With Police Oversight Commission?
The Police Oversight Commission is charged with reviewing a variety of misconduct complaints, lawsuits and other actions lodged against Santa Ana police officers.
Those officers have a due process right to a fair and impartial hearing, and critics of Delgado’s nomination question whether he can do so given his deeply-held belief that policing is, inherently and by nature, oppressive.
Councilman Bacerra doesn’t believe he can. While supporting the appointment of commissioners from a variety of viewpoints regarding policing and police accountability, Bacerra characterized Delgado’s opinions about policing as so extreme as to be disqualifying. He likened Delgado’s nomination to appointing a parks commissioner who supported getting rid of public parks.
Delgado’s views on policing aren’t terribly nuanced. He describes himself as an “abolitionist” – someone who believes police are oppressive and unnecessary for public safety, and should be replaced with a generous network of social programs.
In a February 2 Instagram post, Delgado wrote:
“The mission of the police, from the early days as slave patrols to the militarized police forces we have today, has always been “cruelty as a deterrent.” Police will beat you, taze you, shoot you, arrest you and throw you in a torturous jail or prison, or even lynch you like they did #TyreNichols and countless others.”
In an Instagram post from last year, Delgado referred to law enforcement officers by the derogatory term “pigs” and he hashtags #ACAB and #Fuck12.
In his application for the Police Oversight Commission, Delgado listed his membership in Abolition Now OC under “Community Organizations.” However, he omitted any mention of its mission to literally abolish police forces and described it merely as a group that gives people some assistance when they’re released from Theo Lacy Jail.
AbolitionNow OC is genuinely revolutionary in its mission. For example, it aims not only to sway policymakers but to inculcate children in its “abolish the police” ideology. This Abolition NOW OC social media post is a primer on how to introduce children to the abolition ideology because “we know that the police bring violence and harm to our communities.” For example, it advises telling children they should support getting rid of the police because “communities can keep themselves safe” and “police make communities less safe.”
Abolition Now OC’s message on Valentine’s Day equated “Defund The Police” with true love:
Included in the post were the anti-police hashtags #ftp, #abolishthepolice, #ACAB and #1312.
Delgado Appointment Needs Five Council Votes
According to tomorrow’s council agenda, Delgado will take to the podium to publicly explain his “Fuck A Cop” post and his post celebrating the enemy capture and imprisonment of a US Air Force pilot during the Vietnam War.
Presumably, council members will have the opportunity to question him about those posts, as well as his publicly espoused views on law enforcement, followed by a vote.
