Latinos Assail Santa Ana Police’s Using Term ‘Mex’

Leaders in Santa Ana’s Latino community met with the city’s police chief Wednesday to complain that police officers’ use of the term Mex as an abbreviation in radio conversations and reports insults people of Latin American descent.

“It is degrading,” Manuel Esqueda, a retired banker, said he told Police Chief Clyde L. Cronkhite. “For some of us who have worked hard for the uplifting of our image, it is very offensive.”

The meeting was part of a campaign to urge officers to substitute the term Hispanic or Latino for Mex . Officers most often use the word in describing crime victims, suspects and witnesses to other officers or in official reports.

Cronkhite said after meeting with the city’s Hispanic Affairs Advisory Committee that he would ask other police departments in the county about their policies and would then consider the request.

“The terms that we use are always sensitive,” Cronkhite said, but “any change is not going to be made overnight, and if we do make a change, it will be for the needs of our officers in describing suspects and what is most agreeable.”

Cronkhite said his department has no official word for Latinos, and that use of the term Mex is at the discretion of officers. Lt. Bob Chavez, the press spokesman for the Santa Ana police, said Mex and Mexican are “the commonly used words” in the department.

Santa Ana’s population is about 52% Latino.

An informal Times survey found that most other police departments in Orange County have dropped the term Mex in favor of Latino or Hispanic , both to standardize terminology and because Mexican was not always accurate.

Lou Lopez, a 19-year veteran of the Anaheim Police Department and an officer of the national and Orange County Latino Peace Officers Assn., said the group finds the terms Mex and Mexican offensive. He credited a group of Latino officers in Anaheim with getting their department to abandon the terms.

“We use Latin ,” said Lt. Peter De Paola, a spokesman for the Anaheim department. “And it’s been some time that we’ve used that.”

Manuel Pena, another Santa Ana Latino leader who met with Cronkhite, said, “I would think, for their own sake, that they would want to be as accurate as possible.” The word Mexican , he said, “sort of slights those who are not. There are some people who are very proud to be Chilean or Argentinian.”

The issue arose in Santa Ana when Officer Jose Vargas, the department’s liaison to the Latino community, complained to Cronkhite, Chavez said. It then came to the attention of the Hispanic Affairs Advisory Committee, which says it now plans to informally poll Santa Ana Latinos about the issue. Cronkhite and the committee will compare notes next month, the chief said.

John Acosta, a Latino councilman, said he doesn’t “have a problem with the term Mex . I don’t think our officers and dispatchers use the term in a derogatory manner; they use it in a descriptive manner.”

Nonetheless, Acosta said, he can understand how a middle-aged Latino could be offended by the word. “We went through times in our lives . . . when we heard the word Mex , it was used in a very derogatory manner.”