Santa Ana Settles Civil Rights Suit

Santa Ana ended a 21-year-old civil rights case Tuesday by agreeing to pay $650,000 to former Latino police officers who alleged that they were discriminated against.

City Atty. Joseph W. Fletcher said Santa Ana has spent $1.8 million fighting the 1979 lawsuit filed by Jesse J. Sanchez, Victor Torres and Robert Caro, who said they were forced out of the department by racist attitudes.

“The city did nothing wrong 25 years ago, but there is a practical business side of litigation, and we cannot ignore that,” Fletcher said.

The officers’ attorney said the city’s costs have been much higher, with documents showing at least $1.3 million spent by 1986.

In 1985, a jury awarded Sanchez $900,000 after determining that he had not gotten merit pay and had been harassed so much that he quit, said the former officer’s attorney, Meir Westreich. An appeals court scaled the award back to $647,000, which was shared by the three officers. That trial did not address broader issues of discrimination.

Sanchez said Tuesday’s settlement on the remaining issue was a victory for him and the others.

“We sacrificed our police careers to set an example for other officers, that they can stand up to powerful people, that they can stand up for what is right,” said Sanchez, 61, who has been a car salesman since 1980 and now lives in Indio. “The real motivation was that we were trying to change some of the practices in the Police Department.”

The settlement “seemed like the right thing to do,” said City Manager David N. Ream, who has worked for the city since 1978.

An earlier case in the 1970s found the city had systematically discriminated against Latinos, who constituted 26% of Santa Ana’s population but only 9% of the police force. Sanchez, Torres and Caro were hired in a subsequent recruiting effort. They alleged in legal documents that they were subjected to racial slurs and jokes and that the environment in the department made it impossible for them to excel.