Bolsavik.com

The restaurant/bar at the center of the controversies involving Westminster Councilmen Andy Quach and Tyler Diep is not facing any criminal charges, despite failing to maintain video security as required by its beer and wine permit, the Bolsavik was told.

Last week, Westminster Police Department Sgt. Dan Schoonmaker confirmed with the Bolsavik that there was no current plan to charge Citryst.

As a condition for its beer and wine permit, Citryst was required to maintain continuous security camera coverage through midnight. However, when the police came to ask for security footage for the night Andy Quach crashed his car, the owner said the camera had been mysteriously turned off.

Here’s the story: Before 10:30pm or so on August 1, the consensus is that Andy Quach and others were dining at the West Coast Seafood Buffet on Beach Boulevard. As the Register reported here, the manager of West Coast said that Quach left at around that time, not drunk.

At around midnight, Quach clipped another car and crashed into a pole, knocking out power to 300 homes. His blood alcohol level tested to 0.26 percent, more than three times the legal limit.

What happened between 10:30 and midnight?

(more…)

Audio files posted on the OC Register web site here shows Tyler Diep to be more knowledgeable of what he was doing than the image of an inexperienced new council member he made himself out to be on Vietnamese-language media.

He knew, for example, that his phone call to the police department was being recorded and so asked the watch commander to call him back instead of speaking on the police line.

The issue is whether and to what extent Councilman Tyler Diep interfered with police inspection on behalf of the owner of a Little Saigon area watering hole called Citryst (commercial vidcap shown above).

The Reg’s Deepa Bharath reports here that a review of campaign finance disclosure shows no contributions from Citryst or its owner Amanda Dung Nguyen. So at least we know that it’s not because of public campaign contributions that Diep woke up in the middle of the night to try to stop the police from inspecting the place.

Anyway, so on the night of February 6 - 7, 2008, three officers showed up to conduct a routine business check at Citryst.

But, when they got there, the owner Amanda Dung Nguyen told her security guard to bar the glass door and keep the cops from going in.

Later, when they were let in, there were no problems to be seen.

And then, Amanda Dung Nguyen called Diep.

Barely 20 later, at about 12:15 am on Feb. 7, Diep called the Westminster Police Department. He sounded upset, but alert enough to be careful about being recorded.

The conversation, shown on the Reg’s web site, went like this:

(more…)

Apparently having learned a lesson from Andy Quach’s false denial, his fellow member on the Westminster City Council Tyler Diep (pictured) decided to come clean on an issue that has not even been made public yet.

In today’s issue, Diep speaks to a reporter of Nguoi Viet Daily News (not the Bolsavik) and apologizes for his involvement in stopping an investigation of a Little Saigon drinking hole.

The events took place in February 2009, two months after Diep took office. In his public apology, Diep states that as a new council member, he was still “inexperienced” and did things he shouldn’t have.

The watering hole at issue is Citryst, at Brookhurst and McFadden. On Nguoi Viet, the owner said her place is not a “bar.” Obviously, whether something counts as a “bar,” or a “pub,” or just a plain old whatever you call place where people go to get drunk, is all in the eye of the beholder, and the Bolsavik doesn’t consider it an issue.

(more…)

Cuz that ain’t his name no more.

The OC Register’s Deepa Bharath ran this story about Westminster’s newest city councilman changing his first name. Now he’s known as Tyler Diep.

The Reg story says he did it to “help city staff members and others pronounce and spell his name correctly.”

It may be easier to pronounce, but “Tyler Diep” sounds just like - well, let’s just say the Bolsavik is glad Diep didn’t choose something like “Plower” or “Dewer” or “Layer.”

Diep is not the first Viet to change his name after getting to office. (more…)

Ky Ngo, the perennial protestor outside the offices of Nguoi Viet Daily News, held a party today Sunday.

It’s not clear what it is Ky Ngo (far right in the photo) was celebrating. It could be a Tet’s eve party. Or it could be the one-year anniversary of the protest, which began a year ago Monday.

Either way, ’twas the occasion for Ky Ngo to inaugurate three new effigies, shown leaning against the wall in the photo above.

The effigies are of, from left to right, Dat Phan the current CEO of Nguoi Viet, and next to him, Westminster City Councilmen Truong Diep and Tri Ta.

(more…)

A lot of things happened last week while the Bolsavik was out giving and grading final exams. So, let’s catch up on some pending items.

* In Westminster, Penny Loomer conceded to Truong Diep after it began to look like the recount is not helping her. Diep got sworn in, and Westminster now has a majority Viet city council.

* In Garden Grove, Andrew Do was sworn in, doubling the number of Viets on that city’s council to … two.

* In San Jose, City Councilwoman Madison Nguyen, facing a recall election on March 3, officially announced her anti-recall lawn signs are available for the asking.

* And now for something totally different. Ky Ngo the protester camping out in front of Nguoi Viet is bringing in the big gun. The mother of all big guns. (more…)

As the counting in the oh-so-close Wesminster City Council race continues, Truong Diep got into winning territory for the first time, flipping yesterday’s 22-vote trail into today’s 22-vote lead.

Which raises the question: If Diep’s lead holds, will challenger Peggy Loomer seek a recount, and if so in what order? Will Loomer seek to verify the votes from the Viet concentrated precincts by asking for a recount of the East side first? Or will she want to discover uncounted votes for her in the West side?

With the mail-in ballots all counted, Westminster City Council candidate Truong Diep is still in third place. On Friday, Diep made up only 6 votes, garnering 28 to second-place winner Penny Loomer’s 22.

The Registrar’s office is moving on the election-day paper ballots and the provisional ballots.(*)

Anyway, so some people have been saying that all this is pointless because an election this close will surely end up in a recount. So, what does it matter who’s leading, right?

Wrong.

Many states have election laws that say, if the election is extremely close - usually set at 0.5% difference or less - then the voting authorities will conduct an automatic recount.

Not California. You can have an election decided by 1 vote out of 100,000, and there’s no recount unless someone requests it.

Any California voter, whether or not a resident of the area affected by the vote, can request a recount, for any and no reason.

The person making the request can specify the order in which the precincts will be recounted.

But whoever makes the request must pay for it.

This becomes the great gamesmanship of recount calculus. Will you spend thousands on a recount that will make no changes? And if you do, which order of recount will you request?

(more…)

The phrase “teetering on the brink of” has never been so value-laden. One could say that Truong Diep (pictured) is teetering on the brink of victory, or that he is teetering on the brink of defeat. Both possibilities are achingly close to the line he’s on right now, and which phrasing you use will reveal — well, it reveals something. Not sure what, but something.

The Registrar of Voters’ office is just about done counting the mail-in ballots. One more day, and they should be all counted. The batch of provisional ballots is still untouched by human hands, and those take the longest to verify and count.

With just one day left, Assemblyman Van Tran’s district staffer and Westminster City Council candidate Truong Diep is barely behind second-place Penny Loomer. With two seats available, Diep could still make Westminster the first U.S. city with a majority Viet council, if he manages to overcome the 58-vote difference.

(more…)

With only a few hundred mail-in ballots to count in Westminster, and the entire batch of provisional ballots still untouched by human hands, Assemblyman Van Tran’s staffer and Westminster City Council candidate Truong Diep is behind the winning line by 180 votes.

In the lead for the two available seats in Westminster are incumbent Frank Fry and challenger Penny Loomer, who has 9899 votes to Diep’s 9719.

The chances of Diep adding to the Vietnamese presence on the council, making it the first city with a majority Viet representation, are looking from slim to none. Provisional ballots are, historically, not where Viet candidates catch up. (more…)