The termination and suspension of the officers is the culmination of a year-long investigation that began in September 2015 and entailed interviews with more than 50 witnesses, including 11 different interviews with Guap.
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District Attorney O’Malley announced she will file charges against five Oakland current or former officers, one Livermore officer and one Contra Costa County deputy. For example, text messages and Instagram posts between federal police officer William Johnson and Guap appeared to show Johnson proposing to become Guap’s exploiter in order to sell her to others for sex.
Barry Donelan, president of the union representing Oakland officers, didn’t return a call or respond to an email seeking comment.
The Take Back Oakland Coalition has been pushing demands related to Bay Area police officers involved in seemingly criminal actions.
Schaaf said District Attorney Nancy O’Malley is still completing her criminal investigation into the case and said “we have reason to believe she will be making determinations relatively soon”. Schaaf then said that rather than appoint yet another interim chief, police officers would instead report to Sabrina Landreth, the Oakland city administrator, while they conducted a national search for a new top police officer.
An Alameda County district attorney’s investigator was also fired earlier this year for having inappropriate communications with the woman.
Oakland police said in May that an investigation into allegations that officers committed sexual misconduct with a minor began after an officer committed suicide.
Former Contra Costa deputy Ricardo Perez is charged with oral copulation and lewd acts in a public place and a resigned Livermore officer, Dan Black, is accused of engaging in prostitution and lewd acts in a public place. Although officials did not directly link it to the misconduct scandal, they also acknowledged “the importance of public trust in the outcome of ongoing misconduct investigations”.
A teenage victim, raped and sexually abused by Bay Area police officers from Oakland and several other police forces since she was a minor, has been victimized by police agencies once more.
O’Malley said evidence indicated two of the accused Oakland officers also had sexual contact with the teenager, but that conduct occurred in another county outside her jurisdiction.
O’Malley criticized the Richmond Police Department for helping arrange for the teen, now 19, to stay at the center on the other side of the country, saying her unavailability could hurt the prosecution if she is unable to testify.
Four Oakland cops are being terminated and seven more suspended without pay in the latest round of discipline resulting from the department’s high-profile sex scandal.
The Oakland department previously said two officers implicated in the scandal have resigned in addition to O’Brien’s suicide. He was replaced by Paul Figueroa, who tendered his resignation to Schaaf the following week.
The officers will face a range of felony and misdemeanor charges.
“We are being very sensitive to the young woman who has been exploited and been hurt”, O’Malley said on August 9 when activists arrived unannounced at her office and demanded officers be charged criminally. In June, three Oakland police chiefs lost their jobs in one week.
David Lustgarten, assistant state attorney assigned to Martin County, said he met with law enforcement officials Friday afternoon, and viewed a video of the alleged biting, but no decision on whether to charge Guap has been made.
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The Guardian andAssociated Press generally don’t identify people who say they are victims of sex crimes. Warit Utappa was charged with misdemeanor knowingly and without permission conducting a search of an official criminal justice data and computer systems without an authorized objective, and Tyrell Smith, who has resigned, was charged with four counts of the same charge.
