Officers on Asian Beat Threatened : Flyer Bearing Name of Vietnamese Gang Investigated by 3 Agencies

A gang-related threat against two Orange County police specialists in Southeast Asian crime is being investigated by three law enforcement agencies, police and Probation Department spokesmen said Thursday.

The threat is contained in a flyer, bearing the name of a Vietnamese gang, that was found when a 17-year-old probationer was stopped for questioning Monday.

“We coming to get you!” the flyer says. “Rather die than surrender!”

Organized Gang Suspected

Thomas Wright, a supervisor with the Orange County Probation Department’s gang violence suppression unit, said the flyer appears to be the work of an organized gang, possibly one of several Southeast Asian gangs that have emerged in the county in recent months.

“We’re taking this very seriously,” he said.

This marks the first time that police officers in the county have been singled out by a Southeast Asian gang for such threats, Wright and other law enforcement officials said. Wright added that Latino gangs have on occasion threatened individual police officers in their graffiti.

“But never Vietnamese,” Wright said. “That’s what makes this unusual.”

The officers involved are Brian Kittinger, a Garden Grove patrol officer assigned to his department’s Bolsa Mini-Mall field office in the heart of Little Saigon, and Marcus Frank, a Westminster detective who is the department’s specialist on Southeast Asian crime.

Their supervisors said Thursday that special precautions are being taken to protect the safety of both officers, but they would not elaborate. Frank’s supervisor added, however, that Frank, as a highly regarded expert on Southeast Asian crime with a national reputation, could be the target of crank threats.

About 100 copies of the threatening flyer, a copy of which was obtained by The Times, were found Monday concealed in a door panel of a car during a search of the 17-year-old probationer, Wright said. Probation officers believe that the flyer was being distributed among Southeast Asian gang members both inside and outside the Orange County Jail.

“It was not intended for our eyes,” Wright said.

At the top of the flyer are the letters, “OCJ Boys,” an abbreviation police believe stands for “Orange County Jail Boys.” The document is written partly in Vietnamese and partly in English. At the bottom, it says, “Frank, Kissenger, (sic) we’re coming to get you! Rather die than surrender!”

Pictured on the document are a pair of crudely drawn handcuffs, a knife, a bullet and a barred window. It says, in Vietnamese: “Reward for the good, revenge for the bad.” And just above the officers’ names, in Vietnamese, is the slogan, “To live this life to avenge an old animosity.”

Little is known about the “OCJ Boys,” police said.

But it is believed that it may include some Vietnamese inmates at both the Orange County Jail and Orange County Juvenile Hall.

Several organized Vietnamese gangs have surfaced in Orange County for the first time in the last six months, police said, resulting in increased violence in the Southeast Asian community--including a number of shootings, brawls and street crimes.

Garden Grove Lt. John Woods, who is Kittinger’s supervisor, said the department is fully aware of Monday’s threat and of another threat against Kittinger two months ago. The earlier threat was overheard by police informants, Woods said.

“Whether it’s part of the same threat, we don’t know. But we’re looking into the possibility,” Woods said.

Kittinger was out of town, Woods said. Neither he nor Frank could be reached for comment.

Threats against police officers, especially those who have made homicide, rape or robbery arrests, are not uncommon, Woods said, but this one does not follow the pattern of most.

“It’s pretty common for a police officer to get a threat for, say, an arrest or a ticket,” Wright said. “This is different.”

Westminster Police Lt. Michael Ratliff, Frank’s supervisor, said, “I categorize threats in two ways. The first is spontaneous, where the threat is not organized and very emotional. About 99% fall into that category.

“The second kind--and the ones that I worry about--have some organization behind them. In this case, there were a whole bunch of copies made and it originated from probation, and it could include people in jail.”

GANG VIOLENCE

Orange County police investigators believe several acts of violence, beginning last year, have been related to Vietnamese gang activity:

On Oct. 3, at Ponderosa Park in Anaheim, Hien Huu Tran Nguyen, 19, was fatally shot in the back during a fight.

On Oct. 21, an employee of the Kiss the Club nightclub in Costa Mesa was hit by a bullet that ricocheted after a fight broke out on Vietnamese Night at the club.

On Dec. 30, shots were fired from a passing car at the Kiss the Club during another Vietnamese Night. No one was hit.

Earlier this year, a Saturday night birthday party at Murdy Park in Huntington Beach ended in a fight that sent three teen-agers to the hospital.

On Jan. 16, a brawl broke out at a Fountain Valley skating rink involving several hundred Vietnamese youths from Orange and Los Angeles counties. One 17-year-old was hospitalized for a stab wound.