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Commerce Mayor John Soria.
BY BRIAN HEWS • [email protected]
For the second time in less than a week, a Hews Media Group-Los Cerritos Community Newspaper article has resulted in an internal investigation of a state and county employee.
The first instance involved Kevin Hunt, former GM of Central Basin Water based in Commerce, Ca., who was fired last week after a series of investigative articles by HMG-LCCN.
Now an article published earlier this month has resulted in a Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Internal Affairs investigation of Commerce Mayor John Soria.
Soria is employed as a Law Enforcement Technician for the LA County Sheriff’s Department.
The investigation was confirmed by Sergeant Jeremy Carr of the Sheriff’s Internal Affairs Bureau.
Soria, who garnered less that 1,000 votes to win election, is the Mayor of Commerce, a tiny town in Southeast Los Angeles county that has the biggest card room in the world, the Commerce Casino, along with one of the biggest high-end outlet malls in the country, the Citadel.
Soria, along with Council-members Ivan Altamirano and Oralia Rebollo, have pushed hard to land cannabis licenses in Commerce, handing out $400,000 in sole-source no-bid contracts to two woman who had absolutely no experience in screening cannabis licenses.
One woman was a former grant writer for the city of Compton, the other was a multi-level marketing jewelry sales representative.
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The documents supporting the awarding of the bogus contracts was undisputed; yet L.A. County District Attorney Jackie Lacey has refused to investigate the no bid contracts and the woman behind them.
There are rumors that the FBI is investigating the city’s cannabis licenses awards.
Sensing no retribution from Jackie Lacey and her office, Soria came up with another plan, a self-aggrandizing strategy that involves working with questionable cannabis businesses and former Bell Gardens City Councilman and convicted felon Mario Beltran.
Beltran has been seen all over East Los Angeles acting as the middle-man between cannabis companies and cities.
In the article, HMG-LCCN obtained several pictures posted on social media that showed Soria endorsing binge drinking and public drunkenness, all while blatantly supporting cannabis companies that obtained licenses in the city via the system set up by the grant writer and the multi-level market rep.
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The pictures showed Soria sponsoring a trip on November 22 to Las Vegas, using a City-leased bus loaded with officials, local Teamster union representatives, and Carlos Maravilla, a candidate running for City Council in Commerce.
The word loaded was key to the trip.
Soria branded the trip “Canna Bus to Las Vegas, ”designing a professional logo that included the city of Commerce’s name prominently displayed inside the famous Las Vegas sign logo, along with an Ace card that had a pot leaf.
Seen in one of several pictures posted on the Commerce Now Facebook Page was Soria on the City-leased bus, with a large beer in hand, and several officials, including candidate Maravilla, smiling broadly wearing his Teamsters t-shirt.
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Soria with a beer in hand on a city-leased bus. It was 1:55 p.m. at the time. In the background in Commerce City Council candidate Carlos Maravilla.
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It is illegal to drink beer on a City-leased bus.
In another picture, Soria was seen with Maravilla and Mario Beltran in front of the leased bus.
Beltran was accused by prosecutors of embezzling campaign funds from Ron Calderon to pay for his legal defense in a 2006 criminal case. Beltran pleaded guilty to four counts.
Seven counts of grand theft, one count of perjury and one count of failing to deposit cash was dismissed at sentencing as part of Beltran’s negotiated plea agreement.
In addition, Beltran was accused of filing a false police report when he solicited a prostitute at a seedy hotel in 2013. The prostitute reportedly beat Beltran up and stole his Bell Gardens police badge.
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Canna-Bus : from (l-r) Mario Beltran, Mayor John Soria, and Commerce City Council candiate Carols Maravilla.
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Yet there was Soria and Maravilla, in front of the Canna Bus to Las Vegas logo, both smiling with Beltran.
“Seems like that Canna Bus to Vegas and hanging out with Mario Beltran goes against everything the Sheriff stands for,” said one Commerce resident who did not want to be identified, “not to mention the stain he placed on the City with that stupid logo.”
“And what’s with Carlos Maravila, the Commerce Council candidate who also hangs around felons, I wonder what his Teamster bosses would think of that?”
Several texts into Soria went unreturned
CITY OF COMMERCE….
When will the voters learn, always a major conflict of interest, to vote for anyone connected to law enforcement, such as ( Police/sheriffs). Sheriff’s/PD are two of the largest policing agencies in the nation, and it never makes good business, elect anyone to be partial in making CEO decisions for any city, not just City of Commerce. Conflicts start with the agency laws of rite to unionize, contract negotiations and so forth.
Voters in California, should really start questioning cannabis laws, the voters went to the polls multiple times, voted cannabis in, but there’s just too much red tape and taxes. California almost sounds like it’s becoming communistic attitudes towards cannabis laws.
Almost reminds of the negative halo surrounding the right to abortion…. January will be celebrating MLK day, but when MLK first was instigated, blacks were still asked to use subway and not the roadways. January 2020, Calif. Welcomes freedom of ethnicity hair, which should have been given thumbs up, when the country addressed Civil Rites…..
Reads Commerce is hit with multiple wars in juggling CEO’s duties of a city government.
History in Cerritos, voters back in the late 60’s, said no to two Cerritos Gay Sheriffs running for council. Today’s election, cERRITOS policeman is trying to be seated to CCC, in which the voters said no no to in the past. History will repeat, it is hard to be a CLEAN CEO of Cerritos, when the city has a $19M contract with the LASD.
Cerritos election is March 2020.
He won’t be able to vote on anything having to do with the contract if he is LASD.
Soria has voted and approved 28 cannabis manufacturing plant ordinances in Commerce and was actually the determining vote in a City Council with 2 against and 3 for. Can you give me a code or law that says he should never have been allowed to vote as an LASD employee?
Also, 22 referendums were EACH signed by 951 registered voters in Commerce to put Cannabis manufacturing up for a community vote. The City Clerk refused to accept the referendums stating that 1000 pages were not attached to them. The 3 Pro Cannabis city council members (Soria, Altamirano and Rebollo) know this happened and have ignored ALL public comments at the last 25+ council meetings. Instead they just approved another 6 new ones last Tuesday. This brings it to 28 Cannabis manufacturing plants in 6.5 mile city of 13,000 residents, which the residents do not want. A law suit against the city was filed last October and is on going.
So I’m very interested in your comment that he should not have been able to vote. Thanks!
I would like to make a suggestion that will tell you exactly how serious this is being taken.
Attempt to find out if Soria has been relieved of duty and of you get a foot in the door attempt to find out if he is relieved of duty working means in a safe spot without access to files and justice systems data or relieved of duty at home.
If at home that means he could be terminated and in fact he should be.
LASD should not be concerned the city is going to pull out of their contract. They can’t afford to go it alone.
BTW A Law Enforcement Tech is a nothing minimal -skill job.
Being connected to City Hall probably gets the guy some comfy lameass clerical job with plenty of spare time and opportunity to take time as desired.
I’d love to review his timesheet I suspect he must have been working the phones in dispatch at East LA in 2016 and into 2017 where he was logging almost 48 hours of overtime a month. By 2018 he had to have been in another spot since he logged about 14 hours for the entire year.
Wonder whose corner he will stand in and represent? Know dam well, he will be self serving and will only spit on the community.