According to court records, Silva could face charges related to eavesdropping or recording confidential communications, cruelty to a child by endangering health, providing alcohol to a minor, and contributing to the delinquency to a minor.
Advertisement
Anthony Ray Silva is alleged to have secretly recorded a conversation that took place involving the youths, who included a 16-year-old boy, inside his cabin. The city attorney said that information was confidential, and city council voted to admonish Silva.
The Stockton mayor also provided alcohol for a number of camp participants and counselors.
Reuters reported that Silva, in his official biography, “served as president of the Boys & Girls Club of Stockton for the past six years”.
Silva held a press conference Friday to insist on his innocence after he was released on US$20,000 (RM80,780) bail. He was silent as he walked by reporters outside.
Silva is seeking a second term in November as mayor of the river port city of 300,000 people. His opponent, Michael Tubbs, received more votes in the primary election and is endorsed by the police officers union.
Silva, who is now running for re-election, has faced controversies in the past, including an official admonishment in December 2013 after he discussed contract details with a new city manager on Facebook, despite a promise of confidentiality, according to ABC affiliate KGTV. In 2005, he was accused of secretly taking video of underage girls changing in the restroom when he was a water polo coach. No charges were ever filed.
In 2011, Silva was accused of sexually assaulting a woman. Today he responded to his arrest on charges related to a game of strip poker a year ago at a camp he runs for disadvantaged youth.
“It is absolutely untrue – and I want to say that again, absolutely untrue – that I am not willing to cooperate with an investigation to bring a young boy’s killer to justice”, Silva said.
“For the past week I have been raked over the coals by the media because I owned a gun and reported it missing”, Silva said. In all, investigators say they found 23 photos and four video clips relating to Silva’s activity with teens at the camp.
Silva wore the same black T-shirt, shorts, white socks and sandals that he was wearing when arrested at the camp. Passengers claimed a drunken Silva made an inappropriate advance on a woman in the auto. The mayor was never arrested, but the limousine’s driver filed a civil lawsuit against him and the other passengers in May.
In 2015, a gun that had belonged to him turned up as the weapon in the slaying of 13-year-old Rayshawn “Ray Ray” Harris, who was shot to death in his driveway in February of that year. Investigators say that Beretta handgun was used in a drive-by shooting a month earlier on Church Street.
(Amador County Sheriff’s Office via AP).
The gun would finally be recovered on June 9, 2016, at the scene of a domestic disturbance in Stockton.
Advertisement
The charges stem from an FBI search of his cellphone a year ago, after he was stopped briefly at San Francisco International Airport by authorities who confiscated his laptop and cellphone as part of an unspecified investigation.
