Police Raid Store at Center of Protest

Police raided the Little Saigon store at the center of a six-week protest by the Vietnamese community Friday and inside found an elaborate video piracy operation and thousands of allegedly counterfeit videotapes, mostly of Asian soap operas.

Authorities had been investigating Truong Van Tran for two weeks, ever since they entered the Hi Tek Video store with him and noticed a string of VCRs hooked up to one unit.

They also discovered dozens of videos with crude labels--telltale signs of a video piracy ring, said Lt. Bill Lewis, spokesman for the Westminster Police Department.

About 18,000 videos were confiscated, authorities said.

Police might seek an arrest warrant for Tran as early as next week, Lewis said.

Coincidentally, just hours before conducting Friday afternoon’s search, police also were notified that the store had been burglarized and that both Tran’s Communist flag and picture of Ho Chi Minh had been stolen. The display of those items has prompted daily protests outside the store.

Tran could not be reached for comment Friday, but his attorney, Ron Talmo, said he wasn’t surprised by the police investigation. Authorities have been more concerned with ending the protests than protecting Tran’s constitutional rights, Talmo said.

“It wouldn’t surprise me that the police would investigate Mr. Tran,” he said. “They don’t like him. It would be a nice way out for the police.”

Lewis said police will continue to protect Tran, even though they are currently gathering evidence that could lead to his arrest.

“It seems inconsistent to allow him to do something we’re now aware of when we put people in jail for the very same thing,” he said.

Friday’s raid is the latest bizarre twist in what has become an international spectacle and has evolved into a rallying cry for Vietnamese emigres from San Jose to Australia.

Tran, the shopkeeper who single-handedly ignited the anti-communist furor in Little Saigon and who fled Communist Vietnam himself, insists he is only trying to foster debate about his modern-day homeland.

The controversy erupted in January, when Tran made good on his promise to community leaders to display the flag and picture, until a judge issued a temporary restraining order to remove the items. The judge lifted the ban in February, saying Tran’s 1st Amendment rights must prevail over concerns that the symbols were offensive to Vietnamese Americans who fled the Communist country.

Since then, the furor has steadily grown, from around-the-clock vigils outside Tran’s shop to fast and furious talk on Vietnamese-language radio shows across the nation.

On Friday afternoon, a crowd of 200 people cheered as officers loaded more than 70 moving boxes filled with videos into a U-Haul truck, with each box holding roughly 200 tapes. It is illegal to duplicate copyrighted movies or broadcasts, and making more than 100 copies is a felony, Lewis said.

As for the burglary, police said they have no solid leads or suspects in the theft of Tran’s Communist icons. Lewis said it could have occurred any time between Feb. 20--the day he rehung the picture and flag--and Friday because Tran has not been back to the store since then.

Apparently, a news reporter discovered the theft after lifting up a South Vietnamese flag covering Tran’s storefront window to film the Communist display. Police discovered the store’s back door had been jimmied and a security gate inside the store pried open.

On Friday morning, detectives questioned protest leaders, who adamantly denied being involved.

One of the organizers watching the police raid Friday said he hopes the investigation will force the shopkeeper to leave for good.

“If it happened and if it’s a crime, I don’t think he has a chance to come back here,” said Thang Tran, president of the Vietnamese Community of Southern California, a group involved in the protest. “I’m very pleased today.”

Jimmy Nguyen, a spokesman for the demonstrators, said none of the organizers knew about the theft or condone it.

He said protest organizers have gone to great pains to ensure Tran and his store were not harmed, even on a Feb. 26 rally when 15,000 people crowded into the small strip-shopping center on Bolsa Avenue where Tran has his store.

Nguyen also speculated that Tran may have taken down the display on his own, hoping to implicate the demonstrators and bring an end to the vigils in front of his store.

“It’s a typical Communist tactic,” Nguyen said.

Tran’s attorney said the store owner did not take the items, and has not been to his store since Monday, when police took him into custody after his visit ignited a frenzy that ended with Tran being pelted in the face with an egg.

Over the last several months, law enforcement and manufacturers have been cracking down on the large-scale counterfeiting of videos, computer software and compact disks, including a raid by Westminster and Anaheim police in October that netted 25,000 pirated CDs.

If convicted, video pirates face up to five years in jail and $250,000 in fines.

In 1996, Lewis said, police made 10 arrests of video counterfeiters in Little Saigon, and many of them eventually pleaded guilty.

* THE RIGHT TO OFFEND: Most O.C. residents polled find Communist display offensive but back the right to do it. B1