BY: LIAM DILLON
Before former San Diego police
officer Anthony Arevalos’ arrest in 2011, his supervisors knew he had made
sexually charged comments to a woman with mental disabilities while
transporting her to a hospital. They knew he looked at pornography at work on
his department-issued computer. And they knew he had been accused of behaving
inappropriately toward a 16-year-old girl during a traffic stop.
Supervisors had also cleared
Arevalos of sexually assaulting a 28-year-old woman while taking her to jail a
year before his arrest. They had sent him back out on the streets to patrol
downtown alone. In that case, the sergeant in charge of the criminal
investigation was convinced of Arevalos’ guilt, and a district attorney who
later reviewed the case found problems with the department’s investigation
(though still declined to prosecute him for it).
One of Arevalos’ colleagues
described him this way: “Teflon.”
“I felt he believed no matter
what he did, that he would not get in trouble,” said Henry Castro, who worked
in traffic division with Arevalos and said in court filings he’d used the word.
The depth to which high-ranking
police officials knew about Arevalos’ behavior prior to his 2011 arrest for
soliciting a sexual bribe from a 32-year-old women in a convenience store
bathroom is revealed in a trove of interviews and documents from a civil
lawsuit filed by Arevalos’ final victim.
With new accusations surfacing
against two more SDPD officers this month, the court documents raise fresh
concerns about the department’s ability to stop potential predators before they
strike. Lawyers in the case are arguing SDPD has a pattern of covering up
serious misconduct and are seeking a court-ordered independent monitor to
oversee the department.
In the almost three years since
Arevalos’ arrest, Police Chief William Lansdowne has admitted the department
missed red flags about Arevalos’ behavior. The chief, who retired abruptly
Tuesday, has promised numerous reforms to prevent further officer problems, and
recently ordered an external audit of SDPD. Shelley Zimmerman, an assistant
chief, was nominated Wednesday to be Lansdowne’s replacement. She promised to
reinstate an internal anticorruption unit, which Lansdowne had disbanded, to
proactively monitor officer conduct.
Arevalos’ final victim is known
in court papers as Jane Doe. Among the revelations from her case:
• In the late 1990s Arevalos
told his supervisor he’d flirted with a woman with mental disabilities in the back
of his patrol car. Officer Francisco Torres, who was on the call with Arevalos,
said his partner’s conduct went far past flirting. Torres said in a deposition
that Arevalos had also taken naked photos of the woman and the woman had put
Arevalos’ baton in her vagina while Arevalos watched.
Arevalos’ supervisor at the
time, Rudy Tai, who now leads the department’s criminal intelligence unit, gave
Arevalos a verbal warning after the incident. Tai said in his deposition he
doesn’t recall being told of the more serious allegations. If he had, he said,
he would have acted on them.
• In 2007, department officials
found Arevalos repeatedly visited a pornographic website on his work computer
while on duty. Arevalos was transferred to the traffic division as a result.
In a deposition, Arevalos’
supervisor in the traffic division said it’s department policy to advise new
supervisors of any disciplinary transfers. She said she had no idea Arevalos
had been transferred because of pornography on his computer.
• Later in 2007, the father of
a 16-year-old girl complained to two of Arevalos’ supervisors about a traffic
stop in La Jolla. He alleged Arevalos made his daughter, who was driving alone,
get out of her car and bend over in front of him, ostensibly to check her registration
tags.
Arevalos again was issued a
verbal warning by his supervisors, who determined he had no reason to be in La
Jolla because he was assigned to patrol downtown.
• In 2010, Arevalos was
transporting a DUI suspect to jail when the arrestee alleged he pulled over and
forced his hand inside her vagina.
At the jail, she immediately
complained about being sexually assaulted. Two investigations were launched as
a result of the complaint. An Internal Affairs investigation cleared Arevalos
of wrongdoing. A criminal investigation was more controversial.
Sgt. Dan Cerar, who oversaw
that investigation, concluded that Arevalos was guilty. He said in a deposition
that his investigation was hampered by shoddy evidence gathering. A prosecutor,
Sherry Thompson, agreed.
“I thought that the case was
troubled in the way the police department handled it,” Thompson said.
Cerar said he wanted to bring
in experienced detectives to work the case. His supervisor told him he
couldn’t. Cerar also wanted to interview Arevalos’ colleagues in the traffic
division. His supervisor denied that request, too.
“I was told this is as far as
we’re going to go,” Cerar said.
The district attorney’s office
decided not to bring charges against Arevalos. A year later, he was arrested in
the convenience store bathroom incident. During that time, Arevalos solicited
sexual bribes from at least three other women.
♦♦♦
When San Diego police officers
are punished, Lansdowne said in his deposition, everyone’s aware of it.
“There are no secrets in this
police department as it relates to discipline in this organization,” Lansdowne
said. “It’s almost always common knowledge.”
In its legal filings, the city
argued SDPD acted appropriately against Arevalos at all times, given the
information available. The city says each incident either wasn’t sexual
misconduct, didn’t happen or was properly investigated.
Still, the department’s failure
to fully document problems with Arevalos’ behavior left him with a record that
looked better than it should have.
Arevalos’ supervisor in the
traffic division didn’t know about Arevalos’ previous discipline when he was
accused of acting inappropriately toward a 16-year-old girl. Cerar, the
sergeant who supervised the 2010 sexual assault investigation, didn’t know Arevalos
had been punished before, either.
Had Cerar been allowed to
interview Arevalos’ colleagues, he might have learned about the officer’s
reputation. Arevalos’ fellow officers knew that he passed around the driver’s
license photos of good-looking women he had pulled over, and they believed he
profiled attractive women for traffic stops.
Tai, who was Arevalos’
supervisor in the 1990s, led the sex-crimes unit when Arevalos was arrested in
2011. Tai didn’t tell his own investigators Arevalos had admitted to flirting
with a woman with mental disabilities in the late 1990s. He said in his
deposition he didn’t think the incident was relevant to the case.
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