MPT Chuong Vo.
December 11, 2021
He “declined” to be Mayor of Cerritos this year, did he know about the investigation?
By Brian Hews
A wide-ranging investigation by the LA Times has uncovered “a trove” of racist text messages exchanged by more than a dozen current and former Torrance police officers.
Cerritos Mayor pro tem Chuong Vo is a long-time Torrance police officer; he did not answer emails from HMG-CN asking him about the story.
The Times examined some of the contents of secret texts which prosecutors said went on for years. The texts could jeopardize hundreds of criminal cases where the officers either testified or made arrests.
And the heat is getting turned up; California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta said Wednesday his office would investigate the department in the wake of the scandal.
According to district attorney’s office records reviewed by The Times, the officers’ comments ran the gamut of homophobia, joking about “gassing” Jewish people, assaulting members of the LGBTQ community, using violence against suspects and lying during an investigation into a police shooting.
Vo has lied to the public, and libeled, defamed, and threatened HMG-CN in the past.
During his City Council campaign, Artesia Councilman Ai Taj was shown as endorsing Vo on his website.
Taj told HMG-CN, “I am very surprised at this. I have endorsed only two candidates for the Cerritos City Council race, Mayor Pulido and Sophie Tse.”
Vo later took donations from shady lawyers who tried to frame two Costa Mesa city councilmen for drunk driving because talks had broke down between their law firm and the Costa Mesa police union.
The two lawyers were also embroiled in a fraud and malpractice lawsuit for overbilling, with one lawyer billing over 70 hours in one day and the other 4,735 hours in one year.
After the story broke Vo threatened HMG-CN.
That same year, Vo posted defamatory and false statements about HMG-CN on Facebook.
In the defamatory statements, Vo posted, “So the local community newspaper and owner Brian HMG-CN is trying to influence the city election again to get his candidates and friends in office. [HMG-CN is also] railroading other candidates that won’t give him money. Don’t believe everything you read in the newspaper, Brian HMG-CN lied about candidates in his newspaper. And he is doing that again about me because I will not buy advertisements in his newspaper.”
HMG-CN was alerted of the defamatory statements by a member of the page, retained an attorney, and immediately sent a letter to Vo demanding a retraction.
Within two hours Vo removed the post saying “he did nothing wrong.”
HMG-CN wrote in a statement, “Vo said he did nothing wrong. Vo is a police officer, and he knowingly lied and defamed me in his Facebook post, which generated several negative comments; he deleted the post two hours after we sent the retraction demand, so he knew he lied.”
The Torrance police officers did not respond to messages left by The Times.
And Vo has not responded to HMG-CN.
The citizens of Cerritos deserve a response from Councilman Vo. The citizens deserve to know they have a sitting racist on the City Council.