2 L.A. cops charged with
repeatedly raping, ‘preying on’ vulnerable women
By Michael E. Miller
The woman was walking her dog in
Hollywood one day in 2009 when the Volkswagen Jetta pulled up alongside her.
Two men inside the car allegedly ordered her to climb in.
She complied. She had to.
The men were police officers.
Despite the undercover car, the
woman recognized them as veteran Los Angeles Police narcotics officers. They
had arrested her before.
Officer Luis Valenzuela allegedly
climbed into the back seat with the woman. Then he allegedly handed her dog to
his partner, Officer James C. Nichols, who drove the Jetta to a secluded area.
“Why don’t you cut out that tough
girl crap,” Valenzuela said as he “unzipped his pants and forced [her] head down
toward his lap,” according to a warrant obtained by the Los Angeles Times.
The policeman then “physically
held her head down” as he forced the woman to perform oral sex on him — all
while his partner acted as a lookout, according to the warrant.
The woman didn’t immediately
report the incident because she was scared, humiliated and felt nobody would
believe her.
But on Wednesday, prosecutors
charged Valenzuela and Nichols with raping the dog-walker and three other women
over the span of several years. According to a felony complaint, the officers
repeatedly threatened the women — all of whom had previous drug arrests — with
a return to jail unless they agreed to oral or vaginal sex.
In at least one case, Valenzuela
allegedly pointed a gun at one of the women to get her to go along with his
demands.
“You don’t want to go to jail
today, do you?” Nichols allegedly told another woman, removing her handcuffs
and exposing himself.
Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie
Beck expressed his disgust with the two officers Wednesday.
“These two officers have
disgraced themselves, they’ve disgraced this badge, they’ve disgraced their
oath of office,” he said during a news conference. “I am extremely troubled by
what they’ve done.”
Worst of all was that the two
officers “preyed on folks that are sometimes reluctant witnesses, reluctant
victims,” Beck said.
“It’s a violation of public
trust,” he added. “That’s what makes it so horrific.”
The two officers now face a
combined 32 charges. If convicted, they could each face life in prison.
An attorney representing two of
the women, who have not been named, hailed the charges as a “wonderful
development.”
“It’s a ray of light that these
women will finally see some justice,” Dennis Chang told the Los Angeles Times.
But Chang also said the charges
were “years overdue.” According to the complaint, the offenses date back to at
least 2008. They were reported by multiple women, but the rapes allegedly
continued unchecked as an internal investigation floundered for years. It
wasn’t until one of the women filed a lawsuit against the officers in 2013 that
their fellow LAPD officers moved in, seizing phones and computers belonging to
Valenzuela and Nichols. The accused officers have spent the past two years on
unpaid leave.
Robert Rico, an attorney
representing Nichols in administrative charges of sexual misconduct filed by
the LAPD, told CNN that if the criminal charges reflect those in the
administrative case, “my client absolutely denies it.”
Bill Seki, a lawyer representing
Valenzuela in his own administrative battle, said his client also denied the
administrative charges. As for the criminal investigation, Seki said it had
dragged on for years and was plagued by “issues of credibility” surrounding the
victims, CNN reported.
The allegation that the two
officers preyed on vulnerable, easily discreditable women is reminiscent of
another high-profile police abuse case.
Last month, former Oklahoma City
officer Daniel Holtzclaw was sentenced to 263 years in prison for similar
crimes. Holtzclaw, was accused of pulling over and sexually assaulting African
American women in low-income neighborhoods in the hope that they would be less
likely to report his actions. He was undone, however, when a grandmother of 12
reported him.
In Los Angeles, it is unclear
whether race played a factor in how Nichols and Valenzuela chose their victims.
The ethnicity of the officers and their alleged victims has not been released.
What is clear, though, is that
the two LAPD officers stand accused of sexually preying on women with drug or
prostitution habits. Sometimes the officers took turns assaulting the women as
the other stood guard, while at other times they acted alone, according to the
complaint.
The first alleged rape occurred
in 2008, when a woman working as a confidential informant for the police
department’s narcotics unit was stopped by Valenzuela and Nichols, who she
knew. The cops were dressed in plainclothes and driving a Jetta. Valenzuela
threatened to take the woman to jail if she refused to get into the car, according
to the warrant obtained by the Times. When she got in, he allegedly exposed
himself and made her perform a sex act on him.
When the woman complained to a
narcotics unit supervisor in January of 2010, the investigation stalled when a
detective was unable to find the woman, according to the Times.
When the woman walking her dog
was allegedly assaulted in a similar manner in 2009, she also hesitated to
expose the officers. When she finally did come forward, “police noted that the
woman displayed erratic behavior while recounting the events,” the Times
reported. “Later, she made violent threats while in custody and was transported
to the hospital.”
Despite the woman’s erratic
behavior, LAPD reopened its investigation into the two officers. This time, an
investigator tracked down the dog-walker as well as the woman who said she had
been raped in 2008. Both gave statements.
But the investigation into the
allegedly crooked cops once again stalled, this time for 18 months. According
to the Times, the reason for the delay isn’t clear from the warrant.
During the delay, Valenzuela and
Nichols allegedly continued their crimes.
According to the complaint, the
two cops were involved in a series of other sexual assaults against two more
women from 2009 until 2011. One of the women, identified in the complaint as
“Jane Doe #3,” was allegedly assaulted twice in the span of three weeks.
Another woman, “Jane Doe #4,” was allegedly raped six times over the span of a
year and a half.
One of the women said she had
worked as a confidential informant for Valenzuela and Nichols after she was
arrested. Valenzuela initially told her that having sex with him would help her
avoid jail, according to the warrant. Later, Nichols allegedly told her she
could stop informing if she had sex with him. The woman told investigators she
had sex with Valenzuela twice for fear or returning to jail if she refused:
once when he was off duty at her apartment and a second time in the back seat
of his undercover car while he was on duty.
During this time, both officers
were reassigned to other divisions, according to the Times.
The internal affairs case against
the cops only sprang back to life in July of 2012, when a man left LAPD a phone
message saying that he was a member of a neighborhood watch and that a
prostitute had told him that cops were picking up working girls and letting
them go in exchange for sex, according to the warrant.
When officers belatedly looked
into the man’s complaint, they “thought the circumstances and location were
very similar” to the previous allegations against Valenzuela and Nichols,
according to the warrant.
Even then, the department didn’t
act until one of the women filed a lawsuit against the two officers in January
of 2013. Fearing that Valenzuela and Nichols would destroy evidence, internal
affairs investigators seized their phones and computers and the accused cops
were put on unpaid leave, the Times reported.
The woman settled her suit with
the city in January of 2014 for $575,000, the Times reported.
“Their power over her was
abundantly clear from the get go,” Chang said at the time.
It took more than two additional
years for prosecutors to charge the pair of cops. When they finally did
Wednesday, Valenzuela and Nichols suffered the ignominy of being arrested by their
own colleagues.
The pair are being held on more
than $3.5 million bail and are scheduled to appear in court on Thursday,
according to prosecutors.
An Associated Press investigation
published in November found that at least 1,000 U.S. law enforcement officers
had lost their badges due to sexual misconduct — including rape, possession of
child pornography, propositioning citizens and having consensual but prohibited
on-duty intercourse — between 2009 and 2014.
Although the arrest of Valenzuela
and Nichols brought relief to some of their alleged victims, it’s unlikely to
satisfy all of them.
Despite the officers’ promises to
help her in exchange for sex, one of the four women was sentenced to seven
years in April of 2011 for possession of cocaine with the intent to sell, the
Times reported.
If she does remain behind bars,
then she could soon be joined there by the very men who allegedly abused her.
