Sam Levin in San Francisco
The Oakland, California, police department has fired four officers and suspended seven in a major sexual misconduct case, but critics have questioned why officers haven’t faced criminal charges and why an exploitation victim at the center of the case remains behind bars.
The disciplinary actions, announced by city officials on Wednesday, stem from a case involving a teenage girl who was sexually exploited by more than a dozen officers across the northern California region, according to a numerous news reports and the young woman’s testimony.
In 2015, officer Brendan O’Brien reportedly killed himself and left a note that launched an investigation into widespread misconduct allegations. The Oakland newspaper East Bay Express uncovered that three officers had allegedly had sexual relations with a teenage girl when she was underage.
The girl, who goes by the pseudonym Celeste Guap on social media and in news reports, said she was working as a sex worker at the time. By law, however, those relationships would be considered statutory rape and human trafficking.
A total of at least 14 officers in Oakland as well as eight from other nearby law enforcement agencies are accused of taking advantage of the teenager.
Although the woman has provided numerous news outlets with copies of messages she exchanged with officers, critics of the department have lamented that months later, there are still no criminal charges.
On the contrary, the woman recently went to a rehab center in Florida where she was arrested for aggravated battery charges. The charges stemmed from an alleged incident at the drug rehabilitation center, and she remains incarcerated at a local jail.
Bay Area news stations subsequently publicized the real name of the young woman, prompting condemnations that the media was violating the privacy of a sex-crimes victim. Critics of the police department also said they were particularly disturbed that the exploited woman was behind bars while the officers who have allegedly engaged in misconduct have remained free – many of them still employed by the city.
At a hastily planned news conference on Wednesday evening at Oakland’s city hall, mayor Libby Schaaf said she was barred by law from naming the officers who have been disciplined. The local district attorney’s investigation into possible criminal offenses is still pending, and if the officers face charges, they will be named, she added.
City administrator Sabrina Landreth said the four terminated officers were fired for a range of offenses, including attempted sexual assault, engaging in lewd conduct in public, assisting in the crime of prostitution, assisting in evading arrest for the crime of prostitution, accessing law enforcement databases for personal gain, and being untruthful to investigators.
The seven other officers were suspended for offenses including failing to report other officers who had sexual conduct with a minor, accessing law enforcement database for personal gain, and bringing disrepute to the police department. A twelfth officer was receiving training and counseling.
Text messages between police officers and Guap revealed that officers had leaked her confidential information about undercover prostitution stings, according to the Express.
The administrative investigation began last September and involved the review of 78,000 social media postings and 28,000 text messages, along with 11 interviews with Guap, according to the department.
“We will be changing several of our policies and training requirements to increase officer awareness and ability to recognize the signs of sexual abuse and exploitation and better help victims to escape such abuse,” Schaaf said. She cited tighter controls on accessing criminal databases and new social media policies and training.
In June when the scandal escalated, the police department lost three chiefs in one week, prompting national mockery of Oakland, which Donald Trump recently said was one of the “most dangerous” places in the world.
The Guap case has erupted at a time when police chiefs across the US have lost their positions on the heels of misconduct scandals and fatal shootings by officers, with notable controversies in San Francisco, Baltimore, Chicago andFerguson.
In addition to the exploitation case, Oakland has faced scrutiny over numerous shootings by police and unrelated misconduct allegations. Like the neighboring agency in San Francisco, there have also been accusations of racist text messageswithin Oakland’s police department.
