Good Ink for the Sheriff! Norberto Santana Jr. and Tony Saavedra at the Register today find that “a $2 billion effort to deport immigrants has little measurable effect on crime or illegal immigration” and that government agencies “often work at cross purposes.” To prove their point, Santana and Saavedra tell the story of career criminal Juan Gutierrez Bahena, who has been deported to Mexico six times only to return to Orange County to commit additional crimes: burglary, drugs, checking out a young boy showering and indecent exposure of his genitals to a girl. Though Gutierrez Bahena has served prison time, officials usually just ship him to the border. He has no trouble returning. One awkward component of the story: The Reg boys repeatedly quote Sheriff Michael S. Carona, who only agrees to interviews if he knows he’ll be hailed a hero or a victim. And sure enough: the article blames federal prosecutors—the same office prosecuting Carona on public corruption charges including bribery and witness tampering.
What Day Is it? Oh, any day will do for a chance in Little Saigon to burn a poster of Ho Chi Minh, I guess. Reporter Deepa Bharath found “about 200 people [on Saturday protested] the actions of the Chinese and Vietnamese governments involving a decades-long debate over who owns a cluster of islands in the South China Sea.” Ho Chi Minh has been dead for something like 300 years now, but never mind. The protesters said they hope to influence Vietnam’s commie government to take strong action against China’s commie government which is occupying about 200 oil-rich islands. Somehow they think burning a poster will do the trick.
Inside Baseball: Michael Miller at the Daily Pilot writes about his 100-year-old newspaper and concludes that through its “rocky, but always colorful, history” it’s “been a mainstay in Newport-Mesa.” Not exactly breaking news, but Miller does a nice job outlining the ups and downs of ownership and the rise of Steve Marble and William Lobdell. They survived difficult years at the paper and later jumped to run the Orange County bureau of the Los Angeles Times. The Times bought the DP in 1993.
— R. Scott Moxley / OC Weekly
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.