The Orange County Tribune April 22, 2023Serving Garden Grove, Huntington Beach, Stanton and Westmins

WPD’s new crime-fighting team

By Greg Mellen

Behind the Badge

Sgt. Eddie Esqueda is not a trailblazing reformer by nature, but when he moved into Westminster Police Department’s Major Crimes unit and saw how enforcement could be improved, he stepped up.

He was given the green light to move ahead and the CAGE unit was born. An acronym for Criminal Apprehension and Gang Enforcement, CAGE concentrates

on rounding up criminals with outstanding warrants and putting them back in jail.

“When I came in (to Major Crimes) as a sergeant in 2021, I noticed there were several felons with outstanding warrants,” said Esqueda, a 23-year veteran at the Westminster Police Department.

“Some ID’d in violent felonies.”

After launching CAGE in January, Esqueda said the unit made 101 felony

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School resource officer plan OK’d

A school resource officer program with a fulltime police officer was approved unanimously Thursday night by the Westminster School District Board of Trustees.

Approved was an agreement with the Westmin-

Is Shelter For The Homeless Back on Track?

Briefly-paused progress on a navigation center for the homeless is likely to start again at Tuesday’s meeting of the Garden Grove City Council.

The council will consider – and likely approve –awarding a contract for the construction of the Central Cities Navigation Center to Thomco Construction Co. in the amount of $4,267,450.

Plans to build that center, located at 13871 West St. stalled when the city rejected two unsatisfactory bids from other firms.

The County of Orange is providing $11,550,000

to the city for construction and operation of the center, including a one-time allocation of $5.3 million to acquire and rehabilitate the building, as well as 10 annual installments of $625,000 for operational costs starting on July 1, 2023.

Central Cities Navigation Center will provide beds for 85 people and offer counseling, mental health services, employment assistance and more. It will be a referral-only operation; clients will be transported to the facility.

Also at Tuesday’s meeting the council will consider awarding a contract

And bicycle corridor plan on the agenda, too

Do you like to bike but are a little wary of sharing a lane with a car or truck?

ster Police Department to serve WSD schools within the city of Westminster. The agreement will run for the remainder of the 2022-2023 school year

and for the entire 20232024 school year.

The city will designate a special unit of officers within the WPD consisting of full-time police officers specially trained and selected to provide SRO

There’s help on the way.

The Garden Grove City Council on Tuesday will consider awarding a contract to Southstar Engineering & Consulting, Inc. for management of the construction of a major bicycle corridor pro-

gram in the city.

CalTrans in 2018 awarded Garden Grove $1.1 million in grant funds to improve on-street bicycle infrastructure by 75 percent. The end result should be the establishment of five major corridors:

• Brookhurst Street (from Trask Avenue to Katella

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THE Westminster Police Department now has launched its Criminal Apprehension and Gang Enforcement (CAGE) program to considerable success (Behind the Badge photo).

Builder, operator of planned navigation center on agenda

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to Volunteers of America of Los Angeles for the operation of the center, which will serve the unsheltered of Garden Grove, Fountain Valley and Westminster.

Cost of the first year of operation is put at $2,569,275, the second year at $2,697,739.

The city council will meet at 6:30 p.m. in the Community Meeting Center, 11300 Stanford Ave.

Good news for city’s bicyclists?

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Avenue)

• Western Street (from Garden Grove Boulevard to Orangewood Avenue)

• Chapman Avenue (from Valley View Street to Beach Boulevard)

• Gilbert Street (from Deodora Drive to Katella Avenue)

• Lampson Avenue (from Dale

Street to Haster Street).

The project will include striping buffers on existing bike lanes, striping bike lane network gaps, improving and creating bicycle routes and providing wayfinding signs.

Southstar’s bid is for $135,805. Construction should be completed by August 2023, according to a city staff report.

WPD builds a new CAGE

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arrests in 2022, including 34 fugitives suspected of being involved in violent crimes and 21 arrests of probationers and parolees. In those arrests, the team seized 12 firearms. Since the unit is relatively new, comparable statistics are not available. As a result, Esqueda’s network is setting its own bar, and setting it high.

“We had 11 or 12 arrests in January,” he said. “They’re just rolling and finding lots of success, catching bad guys and reducing crime,” Equeda said. Since joining the WPD, Esqueda has worked numerous positions, but from the outset, he said, “I always dreamed of investigating gang crime.” Now he is up close and per-

SRO for the WSD

Continued from page 1

service.

Typically, a school resource officer’s role consists of law enforcement, informal mentoring of students and in-person teaching.

Estimated costs of such a program are calculated $231,583 plus overtime for a full-time officer.

sonal with gangsters and other chronic criminals.

The CAGE unit consists of three detectives — Andy Travis, Nick Jezulin and Sam Gradilla — and probation officer Carlos Meza, under Esqueda’s supervision.

In addition to criminal apprehension, Esqueda said the team remains committed to the gang element of its mandate.

“We’re continuing proactive enforcement in gang areas and

Continued on page 6

JIm Tortolano Editor and Publisher Marilyn Lewis Tortolano General Manager

The Orange County Tribune is published on Wednesdays and Saturdays with some exceptions. Address is 9402 Luders Ave., Garden Grove, 92844.

E-mail : orangecountytribune@gmail. com.

Website: www.orangecountytribune. com.

Phone: (714) 458-1860.

Established Aug. 6, 2016. All opinions expressed in The Tribune, unless otherwise stated, are those of the individual writer or artist and not necessarily those of The Tribune.

A member of The Associated Press, the Garden Grove Downtown Business Association and Garden Grove Chamber of Commerce.

Yo, what’s the square root of Topeka?

Governors across the country are trying to build some buzz toward a potential presidential candidacy by getting the legislatures in their states to pass some laws to restrict or ban some things he/she/ya’ll don’t/ doesn’t like.

‘CAR MEET’ MEETS THE TOW TRUCK

Retorts

Jim Tortolano

This is an entirely understandable impulse, but if you really want to reach a wide audience, I believe such legislation should touch on issues that we confront on a daily basis, depending on your age, occupation, geography or favorite ball club. Here’s my platform. Feel free to crib from this, Gavin, Ron, Greg or Wes.

• Story problems: Short of spinach for breakfast or having to kiss Aunt Tish at Thanksgiving, few things send a shiver of dread to a student of any age than having to try to figure out how long it would take four people to dig a hole three feet deep and two feet wide if each person was using a spoon. My answer always ended up being something like: Topeka, or 45/96.

• Gender pronouns: This goes back way before the present controversies about forms of address. I have enough to keep straight in my head (Did I turn the car engine off? What’s my phone number?) without having to memorize how you “identify,” especially if your manner of dress is a bit ambiguous.

I believe that any person should be held morally blameless if they use any of these terms in interpersonal contact: Y’all. Yo. Hey, I know you. Accompanied by friendly pointing

Safety Committee appointment tops Stanton agenda

The appointment of a new member to the city’s Public Safety Committee tops the agenda for Tuesday’s meeting of the Stanton City Council.

Stanton does not have a municipal fire or police department. Those services are provided by the Orange County Fire Authority and the Orange County Sheriff’s Department.

The filling of the vacancy will consist of conducting an interview with each applicant and making an appointment to fill the vacancy for Seat Number Three. The panel makes recommendations on public safety issues of interest to citizens.

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It rained on parade, but returns on May 7

The annual West Garden Grove Youth Baseball parade originally scheduled for Saturday, Feb 25 was cancelled by rain. But you can’t keep a good procession down.

On Sunday, May 7, from 7 a.m. to 10 a.m., various streets in Garden Grove will be closed for a new West Garden Grove Youth Baseball Parade.

Major streets impacted are Lampson Avenue, from Valley View Street to Lamplighter Street, and Springdale Street, from Stanford Avenue to Belgrave Avenue.

The following streets will also be closed:

• Cerulean Avenue

• Topaz Street

• Trinette Street

• Amethyst Street

• Picket Avenue

A TRADITION CONTINUES

• Taylor Circle

• Poplar Street

Residents and businesses have been notified in advance.

The Garden Grove Police Department’s Traffic Unit will be on-site during closure times to direct traffic and suggest alternate routes.The annual West Garden Grove Youth Baseball Parade begins at 8 a.m., in front of Edgar Park, at 6202 Cerulean Ave.

A “car meet” in Garden Grove Tuesday night will mean that two vehicle owners will have to meet their cars in a tow yard. According to the GGPD, the gathering of cars in a parking lot at Magnolia Street and Katella Avenue at about 9:30 p.m. resulted in officers spotting many vehicle code violations and issuing 25 citations. Two vehicles were towed and one motorist was arrested for reckless driving (GGFD photo)

Supreme Court stays curbs on the sale of abortion drug

The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday granted emergency requests to block restrictions placed by lower courts for the use of the most commonly-used medication to terminate pregnancy.

According to the Associated Press, requests for a stay were made by the Biden Administration and Danco Laboratories, which manufactures mifepristone. About half of all abortions are now done by medication. A district court ordered the sale stopped on the grounds that approval of the drug by the Food and Drug Administration was flawed. A federal appeals court reversed that, and the issue has gone to the high court.

Kansas governor wields veto power

Laura Kelly, a Democratic governor in the deeply red state of Kansas, used her veto power Friday to remove two items from the state budget.

They are $2 million in public funds for anti-abortion centers

and a provision that would ban state universities from using “diversity and inclusion principles” in hiring.

Although a very conservative state, Kansans in August 2022 voted to affirm abortion rights in the Sunflower State.

Also in the news … Jens Stoltenberg, secretary general of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, said on Friday that NATO would back Ukraine in resisting the Russian invasion “for as long as it takes.”

Earlier he said that Ukraine belongs in NATO, although no formal offer has been made.

Sports: Dodgers perfectly awful against the Cubs

If there’s any doubt that the 2023 Los Angeles Dodgers aren’t quite the same team – yet – that ran away with the National League West title last year, regard Friday’s 13-0 loss to the Cubs in Chicago.

Not only did they suffer their worst beating of the season, they managed only one hit and one base-runner in the whole game. David Peralta got a questionable infield hit when the catcher Yan Gomes and pitcher Drew Smyly collided going after a slowly rolling infield tap, costing Smyly a perfect game.

The loss dropped the Blue Crew to 10-11, tied for second in the NL West with the San Diego Padres. It was their fourth loss in six games.

The Los Angeles Angels beat the Kansas City Royals 2-0 on Friday.

Weather: An early summer?

Balmy days and cool nights are in store for the West Orange County area this weekend. The forecast is for a daytime high of 82 on Saturday, with an overnight low of 57.

It’ll be mostly sunny. Sunday will be cooler at 72 (57) and sunny.

Here’s some new laws which we could really utilize

Retorts:

Continued from page 3

finger. As in, “Yo! I know you! How’s it goin’?”

• Arguments: Married or engaged people who use the terms, “If you don’t know what’s wrong, I’m not going to tell you,” “You never liked my mother” or “maybe you should have married [insert name of long-ago two-date relationship]” should lose 1 percent of their share of community property every time it’s employed.

• Bleacher wisdom: The following are prohibited as being dumb.

1) Questioning a sport official’s call from your seat 50 rows up (assuming no Jumbotron);

2) Shouting: “Which team is your kid playing on?” or “Call ‘em both ways, ref!” when your own consumption of tasty alcoholic adult beverages makes you incapable of finding your car in the parking lot after the game, or during it when you are

thrown out.

3) Specific to football (I hope): “Hit someone!”

What a great, helpful insight into modern gridiron strategy. Surely the Rams would have made it to the Super Bowl again this year if Sean McVay had simply yelled that from the sidelines 20 or 30 times a game.

Jim Tortolano’s Retorts column appears on Wednesdays and Saturdays.

Continued from page 3

Also on the agenda will be a presentation by the city’s Parks, Recreation and Community Services Commission sharing their mission with the council and providing information on its current operation.

The council will meet in City Hall at 7800 Katella Ave. at 6:30 p.m.

Stereotypes Smother “Mafia Momma”

Violence, humor and lots of good Italian cuisine

By Jocelyn Noveck AP National Writer

At first, when suburban mom Kristin gets the mysterious call to head to Italy to settle the affairs of a dead relative, she protests she’s too busy. Then she realizes there’s not much keeping her: Her son is off to college, her job is dead-end, and her husband? He’s cheating with the school guidance counselor.

So why not treat herself to a me-focused trip, a la Julia Roberts? Maybe an “Eat, Pray, Love” trip, muses Kristin (Toni Collette), to which her friend (Sophie Nomvete) replies that what she really needs, bluntly, is to “Eat, Pray, $%&$.”

Soon that’s the slogan for her trip. It also would a great alternative title for “Mafia Mamma,” if they could get away with it. And really, they try to get away with most everything else.

That includes some cringe-worthy slapstick, some Tarantinolevel violence, and also every Italian stereotype you can imagine (Grape-stomping? Check. Gelato, gnocchi and cannoli? Check. Speaking of cannoli: “The Godfather?” Check. Stanley Tucci’s food show? Check!) Some of this is to be expected, but “Mafia Mamma,” directed by Catherine Hardwicke, is over-saturated with shtick.

And in a script which seeks to empower its protagonist by having her don a tight dress and commit murder with a stiletto heel to the groin (and eyeball), the goriest death is by cliché. Nobody escapes it.

Not even the wonderfully versatile Collette, who does yeoman’s work selling the increasingly repetitive plot developments, especially in the latter half, and maintaining sympathy for her

Movie Review

character, who’s such a wideeyed fish out of water, she’s never even seen “The Godfather” (a running joke, which like many jokes here is funny the first time).

The opening scenes are promising. We begin with alwayswelcome Monica Bellucci, as hardened consiglieri Bianca, surveying a crime scene full of dead bodies, including her boss Giuseppe Balbano, and declaring: “This is war.” Soon, Kristin gets Bianca’s call about grandad, whom she never knew. Kristin grew up in America and always assumed grandad was a vintner (and Tony Soprano was in waste management...).

Soon Kristin arrives in Rome, ready to eat, pray and youknow-what. (After all, her husband’s you-know-whatting with the guidance counselor, who has one of the film’s funnier lines when she says, caught in the act: “I want you to know I’m

a feminist!”) It seems like the you-know-what is about to happen quickly for Kristin too, because an impossibly handsome guy just happens to show up at the airport and take her number. At the funeral, Kristin narrowly escapes death when the proces-

Fair: HH

Continued on page 6

‘All Shook Up’ coming in May

Elvis Presley continues to be the ultimate American rock and roll star, and his music is still being sung, recorded and admired a half-century after his passing. You can enjoy a lively lesson in pop musicology at the Gem Theater with “All Shook Up” from May 25 to July 2, all as part of the 100th anniversary of the historic and beaufully restored Garden Grove

The Gem is at 12852 Main St. Call (714) 741-9550.

TONI COLLETTE goes from everyday suburban mom to head-cracking, wine-swilling female crime boss in “Mafia Momma” (Bleecker Street)

landmark.

sion itself is attacked by the rival family (a cascade of oranges running down the cobblestoned street is a clever “Godfather”

The boring menu of “Mafia Momma”

Continued from page 5

reference, until the joke gets tired). At the family home, she’s shown a video message designating her as the successor. She tries to flee, but Bianca tells her she can’t run from her destiny. And so the film chronicles her making peace with that destiny, even if peace means severing a few eyeballs from their sockets along the way.

Not that Kristin becomes evil or anything. Most of her bad deeds are done by accident or in self-defense. But the worst deed of all is that the movie can’t decide what it wants her, or itself, to be. It’s not fully slapstick comedy - wine-stomping scenes aside - and hardly a serious crime saga.

Most of all, it seems to want to tell a story of female empowerment; at one point Kristin is re-

minded to never let a man dictate who she can be or what she can do. Nice message, but it’s muddled. Who exactly is dictating? Surely not her husband, a caricature of a doofus.

And so, despite some satisfying moments, by the increasingly cringe-worthy last third of the movie you’re just annoyed that it seems to want to cover all bases - to have its, er,

cannoli and eat it, too. Maybe Kristin should just eat, pray, you-know-what, and head on home.

“Mafia Mamma,” a Bleecker Street release, has been rated R by the Motion Picture Association of America “for bloody violence, sexual content and language.” Running time: 101 minutes.

WPD builds new CAGE

maintaining control over gang culture and actively intervening,” he said.

The unit also engages in joint operations with other gang units in the county. In addition, there is directed enforcement in hot

spots when needed, short-term investigations, undercover work, and being involved in community events.

“So far, we’ve had nothing but positive responses,” Esqueda said. “They’ve found their rhythm and are going out and doing it every day.”

Continued from page 2

Pacifica teams are chasing two league titles

In Major League Baseball, the pennant races are just getting started. In West Orange County high school and softball, the stretch run is just about to unwind.

In the Empire League, the baseball crown is almost certainly to be decided in two games between Pacifica (19-2 overall and 7-0 in league) and Cypress (198 and 7–0).

Those teams will clash on Tuesday at the Centurion field and Thursday at the Mariners’ diamond.

The Pacifica softball team is also in a battle for a league title. Despite a 3-0 non-league loss to Los Alamitos on Friday, the M’s have a chance – although a long one – to be co-champs of the Empire League.

Cypress (18-2-1 and 8-0) locked up no worse than a tie for the EL crown with Thursday’s 4-3 win over Kennedy. But if Crean Lutheran could knock off

the Cents on Tuesday, Pacifica would be in position to tie up the league crown with a win if it could follow that up by defeating Cypress on Tuesday on the M’s home field.

It’s possible: Cypress squeezed by Crean by the score of 9-8 when they played on April 6.

In Sunset Surf baseball, Huntington Beach (18-8, 5-2) locked up at least a tie for the crown with a 4-2 win over Fountain Valley.

Edison (13-9, 7-0) is champion of Sunset Wave baseball after blanking Newport Harbor on Friday.

For baseball, the Garden Grove League is a tangle going into the final week, with Loara and Los Amigos at the top, and Bolsa Grande and Santiago still within striking distance.

The GGL’s softball chase is also close, with Santiago closely followed by La Quinta and Loara.

In the Golden West League, Katella beat Garden Grove 1-0 and Ocean View defeated Westminster 9-0 to set up two games next week between the Knights and Seahawks for the baseball championship.

Segerstrom (11-14, 8-1) has won the GWL softball title, with Westminster and Ocean View battling for second and third place.

Prep Sports Scores

Friday, April 21 (baseball)

Hunt. Beach 4, F. Valley 2

Edison 4, Newport Harbor 0

Laguna Beach 2, Marina 0

Katella 1, Garden Grove 0

Ocean View 9, Westminster 0

Bolsa Grande 6, La Quinta 5

Friday, April 21 (softball)

Los Alamitos 3, Pacifica 0

Hunt. Beach 7, Edison 1

Segerstrom 5, Garden Grove 2

Ocean View 7, Godinez 5

Loara 7, La Quinta 5

Thursday, April 20 (baseball)

Tesoro 6, Ocean View 2

Whittier 5, Garden Grove 3

Westminster 3, Century 2

Blue Friday for Dodgers

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ous infield hit when Smyly and catcher Yan Gomes collided trying to field the ball.

The Dodgers have lost a fair amount of talent to free agency: where have you gone, Justin Turner (Mets) and Cody Bellinger (Cubs)?

In fact, Bellinger homered against his own team.

It’s still early but 13 is an unlucky number; Dodger fans will hope 2023 isn’t unlucky either.

Honoring catchers in the wry

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intended) for the Blue Crew since becoming a regular in 2019.

He is an above-average hitter with some pop in his bat, batting .263 in his career, with 75 homers. But like many catchers he is beat-up a lot, and – as of this writing – is on the sevenday injured list. Bad timing, because he was batting .333 with three homers and 12 RBIs before suffering a concussion. Logan O’Hoppe (great baseball name, right?) plays for the Angels and looks like the team’s catcher for a while. But on Thursday, after getting his third hit against the Yankees he

suffered a shoulder injury that sidelined him.

A tough loss for the Halos, as he was batting .283 when sidelined, with a team-leading four home runs and 13 RBIs. Like most good catchers, he’s 50 percent talent and 50 percent effort.

“He works his butt off,” said Angel pitcher Aaron Loup of O’Hoppe. True of all great catchers, even if they don’t enjoy the spotlight of the Trouts, Judges and Ohtani’s of the sports world.

But that’s the breaks, the bruises and the smashed fingers of the catching profession.

Catchers often have to use their heads (ouch!)

I have to admit I am partial to catchers. They work the hardest during a game, enduring a lot of fatigue and pain, and – at the same time – are expected to select the pitches, place the offense and in general endure the worst of the grind of squatting in the heat of a long season. They are expected to be the last line of defense and the smartest guy on the field.

Almost Perfectly Awful

Is the Dodgers’ 13-0 loss telling us something?

By David Arthur Orange County Tribune

If you’re one of those who thinks the 2023 Los Angeles Dodgers aren’t quite as good as recent editions, Friday’s 13-0 loss to the Chicago Cubs in the Windy City might seem unexpected, although a bit overdone.

The Blue Crew lost its fourth game in six tries and fell to 1011, good for a tie for second place with the San Diego Padres in the National League West.

Sports Retorts

Jim Tortolano

My bromance with the guy behind the plate has been fed by my own experiences, in my callow youth, as a human backstop. I was leveled by a 250-lb. baserunner who – despite being out by a kilometer – was not going to leave it at that.

I was hit in the head with a flying bat. I broke a finger diving for a really bad throw about 10 feet wide of the plate. And during a coed game, I knocked out cold a girl I had a crush on as she ran to home, or tried to. Despite their key part in the game, few catchers at the highest levels became household names. There’s Carlton Fisk, Johnny Bench, Josh Gibson (of Negro League fame), Yogi Berra (as famous for his language as anything) and Dottie Hansen (fictional character in “A League of their Own” movie).

And yet a ton of catchers become big league managers, such as Mike Scioscia, Yogi, Joe Torre, Joe Giradi, Brad Ausmus, etc.

The two LA-OC teams each have outstanding catchers: one already an established star, and one a star-in-the making.

Will Smith (the Dodger, not the actor, although the actor

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CHICAGO Cubs’ Cody Bellinger (a former Dodger), tosses his bat after hitting a solo home run as Los Angeles Dodgers catcher Austin Barnes stands at the plate during the sixth inning of a baseball game Sunday in Los Angeles. He also homered in the Cubs’ 13-0 win on Friday in Chicago (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill)

Lakers, Clips continue Series’

The Los Angeles Lakers and Clippers each are in crucial NBA Western Conference playoff games on Saturday.

The Clippers trail the Phoenix Suns two games to one after the Suns 129-124 win on Thursday. The Lakers are tied at one game each after the Memphis Grizzlies defeated them 103-93 on Wednesday.

Both teams are at home; the Clippers will play at 12:30 p.m. and the Lakers at 7 p.m.

Embarrassing as it was to lose that badly, it could have been worse; Cubs pitcher Drew Smyly was working on a perfect game until a little dribbler by David Peralta turned into a dubi-

Continued on page 7

Wallach’s HR lifts

By Pete Zarustica Orange County Tribune

With starting catcher Logan

O’Hoppe out with a shoulder injury, backup catcher Chad Wallach got his chance to get in the Los Angeles Angels’ lineup and made the most of the opportunity. His two-run home run in the third was enough – paired with a brilliant pitching performance by Shohei Ohtani – to lift the Halos to a 2-0 win Friday against the Kansas City Royals in Anaheim. Ohtani (3-0) pitched 7.2 innings, striking out 11 batters and walk-

Angels

ing two. His ERA is now a microscopic 0.64.

The win evened the Angels’ record at 10-10. They’re tied with the Houston Astros for second in the American League West.. The Halos will host the Royals on Saturday and Sunday.