Slurs Aired Amid Tran Protest Not First Time

Investigators believe the person who broadcast racial slurs over police radio channels during anti-Communist demonstrations in Little Saigon had a history of making racist comments on amateur radio frequencies since 1996, according to police documents made public Thursday.

During the February protests, a male voice was heard over the countywide frequency used by law enforcement, uttering epithets aimed at the Vietnamese protesters and urging police to shoot indiscriminately into the crowd, the documents show.

On Wednesday, police confiscated radio equipment from the offices of California Crime Control, the private security company hired to patrol the strip mall where the demonstrations occurred.

Scott Knowles, owner of the company and a licensed radio operator, was questioned by police in connection with the radio transmissions. He acknowledged that the radio equipment was for his recreational use but denied making the statements. Police say they lack enough evidence to arrest anyone for the broadcast.

Westminster officers were led to Knowles’ company by a tip from Michael Obermeier, 39, a Santa Ana College broadcast engineer and amateur radio enthusiast. Obermeier is designated by the Amateur Radio Relay League to monitor airwaves for violations of FCC regulations and league standards. His specialty is what hobbyists call “fox hunting”--tracking down transmitter signals.

Obermeier told police that he and his friends had been hearing racist and misogynistic comments made on an amateur radio band frequently in 1996. They decided to track down the signal and observed a man transmitting the remarks at least once, according to a police affidavit filed to obtain a search warrant for radio equipment seized Wednesday.

In mid-1998, Obermeier again overheard inappropriate statements and tracked down a signal coming from the security company’s office in the Bolsa Avenue shopping mall where anti-Communist demonstrations later occurred.

The night of the Feb. 20 protest outside the video store of Truong Van Tran, Obermeier was monitoring the airwaves when he heard a voice using the official call sign of a police helicopter above the demonstrators. He said the voice urged officers: “Why don’t you start taking shots indiscriminately at the crowd?”

“I kind of sat up in bed and said to myself, ‘Did I hear what I thought I heard?’ I had a gut feeling it sounded familiar,” Obermeier said Thursday in an interview.

When news reports came out about the slurs, Obermeier said he felt he had to go to police.

“It was eating at me. I wanted to hear the voice again. We listened to the tapes together. It was similar, but the thing is that you can’t say for certain,” he said.