Ex-SDPD officer Hays to be sentenced

10News Digital Team

6:49 AM, Sep 26, 2014

43 mins ago

SAN DIEGO - A former San Diego police officer who pleaded guilty to groping and illegally detaining four women while on duty was scheduled to be sentenced at the downtown courthouse Friday.
 
Christopher Hays, 30, pleaded guilty Aug. 22 to false imprisonment and misdemeanor counts of assault and battery under the color of authority by a peace officer. He is facing up to a year in jail and probation.
 
Before the plea bargain, Hays -- who is free on $130,000 bail – was looking at almost four years in prison if convicted.
 
Three women testified in April that they were groped and forced to perform inappropriate acts after being contacted and searched by Hays between October and December of 2013. The four-year veteran resigned the day after he was charged in February. A fourth woman also claimed Hays groped her after her arrest for shoplifting, according to SDPD Detective Cory Gilmore.
 
Hays is a former Marine and married father of two, whose father-in-law is Assistant San Diego police Chief Mark Jones. His case is one in a handful of cases involving SDPD officers accused of misconduct in recent years.
 
The string of SDPD misconduct cases began with ex-Officer Anthony Arevalos. The 18-year veteran was convicted in November 2011 of felony and misdemeanor charges involving five women he pulled over in the Gaslamp Quarter, including multiple counts of sexual battery by restraint, asking for a bribe, and assault and battery by a police officer. He is now in prison.

Hays' sentencing comes one day after the City Attorney's Office released that the city will pay $5.9 million to settle a federal lawsuit filed by one of Arevalos' victims. It is the more recent of about a dozen settlements reached between the city and women connected to the case.
 
The city's insurance carriers are expected to pick up around $5.7 million of the settlement, leaving the city to pay around $200,000.   

City Attorney Jan Goldsmith said that in all the Arevalos cases combined, including settlement and expenses, the city has had to shell out around $4 million.
 
On Sept. 16, the City Council authorized the City Attorney's Office to set aside as much as $250,000 to retain outside counsel to defend Hays against any lawsuits filed by women who contend he groped and illegally detained them.
 
So far, Hays faces one federal lawsuit involving three plaintiffs. The city defends employees against litigation for their actions while the workers were on duty.

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http://www.10news.com/news/ex-sdpd-officer-hays-to-be-sentenced

Dashboard video shows shooting of unarmed driver

18 hr ago  By JEFFREY COLLINS of Associated Press

As Levar Jones cried in pain waiting for an ambulance, he repeated one question: "Why did you shoot me?"

Jones' painful groans and then-Trooper Sean Groubert's reply — "Well you dove head first back into your car" — were captured by the camera.

Raw: Dashcam video shows SC cop shooting driver

22 hr ago 1:23 Views: 144k

Groubert's boss, state Public SafetyDirector Leroy Smith, called the video "disturbing" and said "Groubert reacted to a perceived threat where there was none" as he fired the officer Friday.

The 31-year-old former trooper is charged with assault and battery of a high and aggravated nature, a felony that carries up to 20 years in prison. He was released after paying 10 percent of a $75,000 bond.

The dashboard camera video was released by prosecutors Wednesday night after they showed it at Groubert's bond hearing.

Jones was stopped Sept. 4 as he pulled into a convenience store. With the camera recording, Groubert pulls up without his siren on as Jones is getting out of his vehicle to go into the store.

"Can I see your license please?" Groubert asks.

As Jones turns and reaches back into his car, Groubert shouts, "Get outa the car, get outa the car." He begins firing before he has finished the second sentence. There is a third shot as Jones staggers away, backing up with his hands raised, and then a fourth.

From the first shot to the fourth, the video clicks off three seconds.

Jones' wallet can be seen flying out of his hands as he raises them.

Groubert's lawyer, Barney Giese, said the shooting was justified because the trooper feared for his life and the safety of others. Police officers are rarely charged in South Carolina. In August, a prosecutor refused to file criminal charges against a deputy who shot a 70-year-old man after mistaking his cane for a shotgun during an after-dark traffic stop.

Groubert is white and Jones is black. Neither state police nor the FBI keeps detailed statistics on the races of people in officer-involved shootings.

Much like the recent police shooting of a black teenager in Ferguson, Missouri, the racial aspect of the South Carolina shooting bothers state Rep. Joe Neal, an African-American lawmaker who has spoken out against racism in law enforcement for years.

"You are doing exactly what the police officer asked you do to and you get shot for it?" said Neal. "That's insane."

Neal said he doubts the trooper would have been charged without the video. South Carolina has nearly 300 police agencies, and many smaller forces don't have dashboard cameras.

Jones is recovering after being shot in the hip. He released a statement last week saying he hopes his shooting leads to changes in how police officers treat suspects.

"I thank God every day that I am here with a story to tell and hope my situation can make a change," Jones said.

He and his lawyer have not spoken publicly since Groubert was charged Wednesday.

Groubert first worked for the Highway Patrol from September 2005 to September 2009. After going to work for the Richland County Sheriff's Office, he returned to the state agency in July 2012.

This isn't the first time Groubert fired his service weapon. In August 2012, Groubert and another trooper chased a man who drove away from a traffic stop and fired at the suspect after he shot first, according to the Highway Patrol. The suspect was convicted of attempted murder and is spending 20 years in prison.

Groubert was awarded the agency's Medal of Valor Award for his actions in protecting the public.

So far in 2014 in South Carolina, police have shot at suspects 35 times, killing 16 of them, according to the State Law Enforcement Division. The number of officer-involved shootings has been steadily increasing over the past few years, with 42 reported in 2013.

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Follow Jeffrey Collins on Twitter at http://twitter.com/JSCollinsAP

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Officer shoots five kittens; children watch upstairs

September 9, 2014

Chrystal MahanDetroit Top News Examiner

The Ohio Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals is pushing for animal cruelty charges against North Ridgeville, Ohio police officer Barry Accorti, according to the Morning Journal on June 12. Executive director of the Ohio SPCA Teresa Landon, told the Morning Journal that she felt Accorti should be punished for what he did. He opened fire in a residential neighborhood and killed the kittens in cold blood while the children watched. “The kittens were just sitting there. They didn’t have to die. They were only 10 months old at most and they still could have been socialized,” she told the Journal.

A homeowner requested help from the local humane society when a female cat and her babies started giving the homeowner a flea problem. Her husband had tried to remove the cats himself, only to be attacked by the aggressive mother who did not want her kittens to be touched. The part-time humane officer told the woman that the shelter was full so these kittens would have to go to “kitten heaven.” He then shot the kittens to death while the women’s four children watched in horror from an upstairs window.

When the shots were almost over, the children ran downstairs to their mother's arms screaming and crying. Residents in the neighborhood were outraged. No one told them what was going on as they began to fear for the life after the first shot was fired.

The chief of police plans to take no disciplinary actions. The homeowner has filed a complaint with the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

What do you think the officer should have done differently?

http://www.examiner.com/article/officer-shoots-five-kittens-children-watch-upstairs

Police: Retired cop had 8,000 child-porn pictures

D.S. Woodfill, The Arizona Republic  10:02 a.m. EDT September 3, 2014 

PHOENIX — A former police sergeant jailed on 10 counts of sexual exploitation of a minor was found to have thousands of pictures of children being abused, according to documents released Tuesday.

Robert Carrillo, a 37-year veteran of the Phoenix Police Department, was released Saturday on $100,000 bail, according to court documents and the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office.

Carrillo, 61, was arrested Friday following an investigation by the Phoenix Police Department's Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force. Records show Carillo, who retired earlier this year, was looking at child pornography while under surveillance by law enforcement.

A charging document said an unnamed person told police that Carrillo had images of children who may be as young as 12 years old. However, when investigators searched the home, they found pictures of victims as young as 2 to 3 years old, police records showed.

Authorities said the pictures were stored on a variety of devices, including a flash drive that had "approximately 8,000 images of minors in sexually exploitative positions."

No one answered the door to Carrillo's home Tuesday evening, and police officials did not immediately respond to a request for additional information.


The records did not indicate where Carillo may have accessed the images or whether he knew any of the victims.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/09/03/retired-cop-thousands-child-porn-pic/15009109/

Prosecutors charge Oklahoma officer with rape

By KRISTI EATON of Associated Press

Daniel Holtzclaw, 27, also faces charges of forcible oral sodomy and indecent exposure.

Holtzclaw, a former standout football player in high school and college, was arrested Aug. 21. He remained in custody on a $5 million cash bond Friday, according to jail records.

He is accused of stopping women, who were all black and between the ages of 34 and 58, while on duty in Oklahoma City. Prosecutors allege that he raped two women and either fondled others or forced them to expose themselves, and police said there may be more victims.

Holtzclaw's defense attorney, R. Scott Adams, said Friday that his client "denies he ever did anything inappropriate with anyone." He declined further comment.

The investigation began when police said a woman complained that Holtzclaw had sexually assaulted her during a traffic stop on a boulevard about two miles north of the state Capitol.

According to the charging documents, Holtzclaw told the women that if they didn't comply with his wishes, they would be arrested or physically harmed.

In one instance, Holtzclaw went to a woman's residence and made her sit in her car and expose her breasts to him, according to a probable cause affidavit.

"Holtzclaw then touched her breasts barehanded. (The woman) had warrants for her arrest but he advised to work with him and he could take care of her," the probable cause affidavit said.

Later, Holtzclaw returned to the woman's residence and entered without permission and found the woman's boyfriend, according to the document. Holtzclaw told the man that the home was "a lone woman's residence," and was insistent that the man shouldn't be there, according to the affidavit.

The police department placed Holtzclaw on leave shortly after the allegations emerged in June, Chief Bill Citty said when announcing the arrests.

"We started the investigation, and we started looking at traffic stops he had made throughout the previous months to try to identify and initiate contact with females that we knew he had stopped during that period of time ... to see if they had been sexually assaulted," Citty said.

Holtzclaw had joined the force after graduating with a criminal justice degree from Eastern Michigan University. He tried out for the Detroit Lions after he was not taken in the NFL draft but was cut from the team.

He had been with the police department for three years and began street patrols about 18 months ago.

Holtzclaw's lawyers have sought to lower the bond amount, saying he's not a flight risk or risk to the community.

The maximum charge in Oklahoma for one count of first-degree rape alone is life in prison.

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Follow Kristi Eaton on Twitter at http://twitter.com/KristiEaton

http://news.msn.com/crime-justice/prosecutors-charge-oklahoma-officer-with-rape