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1 19. Indeed,this is one ofvarious on-and-off duty incidents involving Officer Rodriguez on which <br /> 2 <br /> Chief Valentin not only failed to taken appropriate action and Chief Valentin allowed Officer Rodriguez to <br /> 3 <br /> 4 publicly accuse MENENDEZ as being the author of this Memo and of forwarding same to the Orange <br /> 5 County District Attorney's Office. <br /> 6 20. Although this letter was,in fact,forwarded to the Orange County District Attorney's Office <br /> 7 <br /> (who employs many retired CITY police officers as investigators),MENENDEZ is informed and believes <br /> 8 <br /> 9 that Officer Rodriguez was neither criminally-charged nor even interviewed/investigated for his role. <br /> 10 21. During this time period,Officer Rodriguez spoke and j oked openly about these investigations <br /> 11 in team meetings and in roll call, specifically and repeatedly about the driver being a perceived homosexual. <br /> 12 <br /> D. CITY's Major Enforcement Team. <br /> 13 <br /> 14 22• The Major Enforcement Team("MET")is a SWAT-like team"created"in January of 2020 <br /> 15 by CITY's Police Chief David Valentin. <br /> 16 23. Persons associated with MET are considered to be part of Chief Valentin's "gang/camp." <br /> 17 <br /> 24. Officer Rodriguez was rewarded for his above-described conduct, not only by being <br /> 18 <br /> 19 appointed as a founding member of the MET but bybeing allowed to hand-pick the other MET officers(i.e., <br /> 20 his former trainees and other brand new non-lateral officers.) <br /> 21 25. Officer Rodriguez openly bragged that Chief Valentin gave him the authority to pick and <br /> 22 <br /> choose whom he wanted to become MET officers and,not surprisingly,those perceived to be in the Valentin <br /> 23 <br /> 24 "gang/camp"were chosen while officers with more seniority and more experience(who were not perceived <br /> 25 to be in the Valentin"gang/camp") were not chosen. <br /> 26 26. MET members are known to share gang-like matching black skull tattoos with the word <br /> 27 <br /> "MET", an ace of spades and the numbers "040". Historically, the ace of spades playing card was a token <br /> 28 <br /> of death used in the Vietnam war by American soldiers.US soldiers would drop ace of spades cards,which <br /> 6 <br /> MENENDEZ V. CITY OF SANTA ANA CASENO. <br /> COMPLAINT <br />