Activists Demand Prosecution of Officers Involved in Alleged Sexual Exploitation Scandal

ALAMEDA COUNTY, CA — Activists Tuesday demanded action from Bay Area district attorneys in a police sexual exploitation scandal that has implicated officers in law enforcement agencies from three counties.

Members of the Anti-Police Terror Project went to district attorneys' offices in San Francisco and Oakland today asking about investigations into whether there was criminal conduct in the contact between officers and an Oakland police dispatcher's daughter, an apparent victim of human trafficking who goes by the moniker Celeste Guap.

In Oakland, the activists asked District Attorney Nancy O'Malley to commit to prosecuting the officers for raping the girl while she was underage. O'Malley met with the protesters briefly outside her office, committing to prosecute the officers if she found evidence sufficient to convict them.

"The rules that I live by in my profession is that we have to have sufficient evidence in order to bring a case to court," O'Malley said.

She said she hopes to have the criminal investigation into the matter concluded in the next few weeks. O'Malley's office has been investigating the allegations since at least May, when Mayor Libby Schaaf announced that she was asking the district attorney to step in.

But the Oakland police internal investigation has been going on since at least last September, when Officer Brendan O'Brien killed himself and apparently implicated other officers in a typed suicide note.

The police investigation has been criticized by the department's federal monitor, led to an audit of the department's training and recruitment, and three police chiefs resigned as the scandal grew.

"When you have that much corroborating evidence ... why is it taking Nancy O'Malley over two months to arrest and charge these racist cops?" organizer Cat Brooks said outside of O'Malley's office today. "What we're sure about is that nothing's going to happen. The only way these cops are going to be held accountable is if the community keeps up the pressure."

O'Malley said that in addition to gathering as much evidence as possible, her investigators are working to be "sensitive to the young woman who has been exploited and hurt, making sure she's taken care of."

Her office is also working with victim advocates to determine if there are any other victims, she said. One former investigator in O'Malley's office, former Oakland police Capt. Ricardo Orozco, was implicated in having communicated with Guap and was fired from his position after the allegations surfaced.

In addition to Oakland and San Francisco, officers with the Livermore, San Francisco and Richmond police departments as well as the Alameda County and Contra Costa County sheriff's offices have been linked to the expansive investigation.

In San Francisco, Guap has told media outlets that she was involved with three officers, including one who transferred from Oakland. Police have declined to comment on specific officers but have said there is an active investigation into possible connections between Guap and officers on the force.

Activists arrived at the San Francisco District Attorney's Office at the Hall of Justice Tuesday and demanded that if the allegations are proven true, the officers will be charged and prosecuted with sex trafficking of a minor with special gang enhancements because they were acting as a gang, Anti-Police Terror Project member Yayne Abeba said.

"She ran to an officer for help from her pimp, she was underage at the time, and instead of helping her they decided to sexually exploit her," Abeba said. "So she went to police asking for help from exploitation and they furthered the exploitation."

District Attorney's Office spokesman Alex Bastian said his office will prosecute if an investigation finds evidence that officers committed a crime in San Francisco.

"If there is a crime, if there are facts under the law necessary to support a prosecution and if the crime occurred in San Francisco, that is something that we would not only investigate but prosecute, but those are questions that need to be answered," Bastian said.

Abeba said she felt that law enforcement agencies and the public were not taking the scandal seriously because Guap is now 18. Guap has told police and news media that she began having sex with police officers when she was a minor working as a sex worker. Some officers allegedly tipped her off to police raids or introduced her to other police officers in return.

By Bay City News

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