In May 2014, in pre-Donald Trump Orange County, 23-year-old Christopher Lee Rogers couldn’t get a job and he found a scapegoat: “Wetbacks.”
Rogers stood in front of a Santa Ana auto repair shop owned by Ruben Borroels and his two sons and decided to let them know of his feelings, according to court records.
“I can’t get a job because of you Mexicans,” he screamed. “If you are Mexican, go back to Mexico . . . Fuck you, you wetback, Mexican, get out of America!”
Rogers then entered the workshop, picked up a broom and began sweeping while yelling additional slurs and threatening a fight.
After slightly connecting a punch to Ruben’s chin, the jobless man called 911, believing he was in the right and could have the business owners deported.
By the time Santa Ana Police Department officer Michael McCarthy arrived, Rogers had fled but was located about a block away. He told McCarthy to “fuck off” and questioned the officer’s nationality.
The fiasco landed Rogers in court, where in January 2015 he received a punishment of 16 months in jail after a jury convicted him of felony assault that was a hate crime, disorderly conduct and disturbing the peace.
But he appealed, claiming he’d acted in self-defense and that he’d entered the business merely to apply for a job.
Late last month, the California Court of Appeal based in Santa Ana determined from a police report that Roger had been intoxicated during the incident, rejected his self-defense assertion, essentially laughed at the job seeking explanation and affirmed the conviction.
CNN-featured investigative reporter R. Scott Moxley has won Journalist of the Year honors at the Los Angeles Press Club; been named Distinguished Journalist of the Year by the LA Society of Professional Journalists; obtained one of the last exclusive prison interviews with Charles Manson disciple Susan Atkins; won inclusion in Jeffrey Toobin’s The Best American Crime Reporting for his coverage of a white supremacist’s senseless murder of a beloved Vietnamese refugee; launched multi-year probes that resulted in the FBI arrests and convictions of the top three ranking members of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department; and gained praise from New York Times Magazine writers for his “herculean job” exposing entrenched Southern California law enforcement corruption.