Judge backs Westminster in video store suit
A former Westminster video-store owner who prompted
massive demonstrations by displaying a Vietnamese flag and a
portrait of communist leader Ho Chi Minh in his shop two years
ago has lost a legal challenge of the city's response.
U.S. District Court Judge Carlos R. Moreno this week granted
the city's motion to quash the lawsuit filed last year by Truong Van
Tran. The court concluded that Tran's constitutional rights were not
violated, the judge wrote in an 11-page decision released
Thursday.
Neither Tran nor his lawyer could be reached for comment.
The former Little Saigon shopkeeper became the center of
controversy in early 1999 when a display of the Vietnamese flag
and poster of Ho inside his shop sparked 53 days of protests by
crowds numbering as many as 15,000, mostly Vietnamese refugees
angry over deaths, imprisonments and family separations caused by
the communist takeover of South Vietnam. Police, sometimes in riot
gear, made 52 arrests over seven weeks and racked up more than
$200,000 in overtime.
The saga ended in March when Westminster police entered
Tran's shop to investigate theft of the communist items and
discovered 15,000 illegally duplicated videotapes and more than
100 videocassette recorders. Tran, who eventually lost his
business, was later convicted of video piracy and sentenced to 90
days in jail.
In his lawsuit, filed a year later, Tran accused the city of
Westminster and Police Chief James Cook, among others, of
violating his constitutional right to free speech by failing to protect
him adequately from the protesters.
Moreno wrote in his ruling that the evidence, "even when
interpreted generously, hardly permits the conclusion that the
officers were negligent let alone reckless or deliberately indifferent."
By David Haldane - The Los Angeles Times - May 25, 2001.
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