By Darrell Smith
Former West Sacramento
police officer Sergio Alvarez did not force women into having sex and stands
accused of sexual assault because of lies, his defense attorney told a Yolo
Superior Court jury Friday.
“I’m not saying he’s a good
cop. I’m saying he didn’t force victims,” defense attorney J. Toney said during
closing arguments before jurors began their deliberations Friday afternoon.
Alvarez, 38, faces life in
prison if convicted on the 27 counts alleged by Yolo County prosecutors. The
counts include rape and oral copulation by use of authority and aggravated
kidnapping connected to his alleged attacks on women in 2011 and 2012 while
patrolling West Sacramento streets on the graveyard shift.
Alvarez, a West Sacramento
native, joined the city’s Police Department in 2007. Allegations surfaced in
September 2012 that he sexually assaulted a woman while in uniform. Other
alleged victims came forward, and Alvarez’s trial focuses on alleged attacks
against five women.
A five-month investigation
by West Sacramento and Sacramento police led to a Yolo County grand jury’s
indictment and Alvarez’s arrest in February 2013.
Toney said Thursday that
the West Sacramento Police Department was embarrassed that one of its own was
having sex with prostitutes and drug addicts.
“This is a furious Police
Department who throws the book at an officer who was acting improperly,” he
said Friday.
Yolo County Deputy District
Attorney Garrett Hamilton in his summation Thursday drew a disturbing portrait
of a rogue cop who targeted vulnerable women for forced sex in the back of and
outside his cruiser on patrol.
“They wouldn’t report and
they wouldn’t be believed if they did,” Hamilton said Thursday.
Toney on Friday said his
client admitted to sexual contact with three of the women and said none was
forced into sex acts or kidnapped to other locales for sex.
The defense attorney said
Alvarez never ignored service calls to have sex, contrary to assertions by
prosecutors.
“It’s when he’s riding on
routine patrol,” Toney told the jury. “He’s roving on his own time.”
One woman, Toney said, did
not consider herself a victim and was sexually involved with Alvarez for months
after their first encounter.
“She’s flirtatious. She’s
turned on by the man,” Toney said, adding that the woman “continued in a
relationship that she started.”
Toney said the testimony of
the women – drug-addicted, addled and working the streets – couldn’t be
trusted.
One woman was “not only a
liar, but a fairly accomplished liar,” he said. Another was portrayed as a
“pathetic, bipolar woman with no memory.”
“We’re dealing with five
addicts who’ve taken drugs to the point where what you think of as common sense
isn’t,” Toney told the jury.
But Hamilton in his
rebuttal said it was Alvarez who lied.
“The defense in this case
can be summed up as follows,” Hamilton said. “According to Sergio Alvarez, all
these women are basically liars. That’s his defense. Why would all these women
wait until September and October 2012 to tell these big lies?”
