SAN FRANCISCO Seven current and former San Francisco Bay Area law enforcement officers will face charges in connection with a sex scandal that has rocked the Oakland Police Department, prosecutors said on Friday. A 12th officer will undergo counseling for bringing disrepute to the force. The scandal soon widened, as the woman claimed she also had sexual or other inappropriate contact with officers from other police agencies.
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The Oakland department previously said two officers implicated in the scandal had resigned and another killed himself a year ago.
The former Livermore cop Dan Black is facing two misdemeanors for engaging in prostitution and two misdemeanors for engaging in a lewd act in public. Both Perez and Black have resigned. The union previously said it would not be representing most of the implicated officers because the alleged misconduct occurred while they were off-duty, according to The AP.
Giovani LoVerde of the Oakland Police Department, charged with one felony count of oral copulation with a minor. An Alameda County sheriff’s spokesman told the Times earlier this year that an internal review showed no deputies had committed illegal acts or violated department policy in relation to the scandal.
It is unclear when authorities will officially file the charges, as Guap may need to testify. Some officers who engaged in “sexting” with the woman can not be prosecuted because the victim was not underage at the time, said O’Malley, who characterised the online activity as “sexually explicit or inappropriate chatter”. “While I find most of the conduct we covered morally reprehensible and not befitting a sworn law enforcement officer, it is nonetheless outside of the criminal statutes”.
The Oakland Police Department has started dismissal proceedings against the Oakland officers implicated in the case, Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf said in a press conference Thursday, according to ABC station KGO in San Francisco.
“Officers have not been taken into custody”, said O’Malley.
O’Malley said five Oakland police officers, a Livermore cop and a former Contra Costa County Sheriff’s Office deputy will be charged in connection to the scandal.
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The Oakland department cycled through three police chiefs in 10 days in June amid the sex abuse scandal. It expects to appoint a new chief in January. President Barry Doneland said in the statement today that the union is disappointed by the actions of the officers linked to the sexual misconduct, The AP reported. But O’Malley’s office has yet to file any charging papers for the individuals she named earlier this afternoon. She is now being jailed in Florida on suspicion she assaulted a guard at a treatment center where she was living. Community members have accused the Richmond Police Department, which raised the funds to send her to Florida for treatment for drug addiction, of attempting to remove her from the state. In exchange, some officers allegedly paid her and shared details about upcoming prostitution raids. Prosecutors say they conducted a “meticulous examination” of the massive amount of evidence they gathered for the case, including 2,899 pages of Instagram posts, 76,472 pages of communication on Facebook, 59,960 text messages, 6,069 images, 546 multimedia messages and 21 videos. Her office was not told that Guap was being moved to Florida, and is prepared to pay for her airfare back to California.
