Name & Shame - Antioch, Pittsburg cops charged in vast conspiracy to violate civil rights
Federal authorities Thursday charged 10 current and former Antioch and Pittsburg police officers in a set of sweeping indictments alleging offenses ranging from cheating on training classes to savage violations of civil rights in one of California’s biggest criminal cases of police corruption.
The most serious and disturbing charges — civil rights violations to “injure, oppress, threaten and intimidate citizens of Antioch” — were filed against two current and one former officer from that city’s police department, where residents have long complained of excessive force and where dozens of officers have been placed on leave amid a scandal over their racist text messages.
“Any breach of the public’s trust is absolutely unacceptable,” said FBI Special Agent In Charge Robert Tripp. “The actions today make clear that nobody’s above the law.”
Antioch officers Morteza Amiri, Devon Wenger and Eric Rombough are accused of plotting violence against specific people, collecting “trophies” of their crimes, and reveling in the aftermath of certain alleged crimes. They’re also accused of falsifying official reports to justify the violence and cover their tracks.
The indictment, for example, alleged that in February 2019, Amiri and Rombough talked about coming to work on a day they planned to take off to retaliate against a person who they believed had crossed a fellow officer.
“I’m gonna f—- someone up and hopefully get you a bite,” Rombough allegedly told Amiri, an officer with a police dog, who replied: “Exactly! Blood for blood.”
Prosecutors say between March 2019 and November 2021, Amiri’s dog bit 28 people, and Rombough deployed a 40mm “less lethal” launcher at 11 subjects from November 2020 through August 2021. Records show that of the 28 bite victims, 19 were Black residents, or 68 percent.
Via text, the indictment says, the trio egged each other on to use violence and swapped photos of people they had injured. In one text, Wenger wrote that “we need to get into something tonight bro!! Lets go 3 nights in a row dog bite.” Later that night in August 2020, Amiri and Wenger pulled somebody out of a car and took them to the ground. Amiri later texted Wenger pictures of that injured person.
A federal grand jury in San Francisco handed down the four separate indictments, each charging different schemes. None of the officers was charged with all the alleged offenses.
Wenger, along with former Antioch Officer Daniel Harris, was also charged with possession of and conspiracy to distribute anabolic steroids. Former Antioch Officer Timothy Manly Williams was charged with obstruction for allegedly interfering with an ongoing homicide and attempted murder investigation targeting an Oakland-based gang believed to be responsible for several shootings.
And Amiri, along with former Antioch Community Service Officer Samantha Peterson and former Pittsburg officers Patrick Berhan, Brauli Rodriguez Jalapa, Ernesto Juan Mejia-Orozco and Amanda Theodosy-Nash, were charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud for training course cheating. They are accused of having someone else take courses that qualified them for pay raises.
The wire fraud counts carry a maximum sentence of 20 years, as do the falsification of evidence charges, while the deprivation of rights counts carry a maximum sentence of 10 years.
The FBI rounded up and arrested most of the officers early Thursday morning in a series of raids across the Bay Area and as far away as Hawaii and Texas, following indictments that capped a two-year investigation.
Several of the accused cops appeared before a federal magistrate in Oakland, where the cases will be tried.
Rombough appeared dressed in civilian clothes, with bloody hands and knees, ripped clothes and a shirt that read, “don’t weaken.” His attorney bristled at the FBI raids, telling U.S. District Magistrate Donna Ryu that Rombough has strong Bay Area ties and would come to court if he’d been ordered to.
“There is absolutely no reason for Mr. Rombough to appear here in handcuffs today,” his attorney, Will Edelman, said in court.
U.S. Marshals led Amiri into court, where he appeared with attorneys Michael Rains and Julia Fox.
Amiri, Rombough, Berhan, Peterson, Rodriguez-Jalapa, and Mejia-Orozco all pleaded not guilty. Prosecutors agreed to release each of the men on $100,000 property bonds, provided they agree not to contact alleged victims, co-defendants or witnesses, to relinquish their weapons, to surrender their passports, and to agree to travel restrictions. Peterson was released without having to put up property.
Though lawyers for Rombough, Mejia-Orozco and Berhan objected to the property bonds, Ryu agreed to prosecutors’ request, citing “the very serious nature of these charges.”
Prosecutors argued that the bonds were necessary because the officers “swore an oath to protect and serve the community and uphold the constitution and did the opposite.”
Ryu granted Mejia-Orozco — who works as an armed security guard in San Francisco — a chance to argue in a future hearing that he should be allowed to possess a gun at work.
The Antioch Police Officers Association posted Thursday on Facebook that “we are saddened to learn of what has happened and look forward to the legal process playing itself out.” The APOA added that “we are committed to still providing quality service to the citizens of Antioch and also providing support for our members who are still working through this difficult time.”
The arrests mark the end of an investigation that started in early 2022 when a tipster informed the FBI and Contra Costa District Attorney that a group of East Contra Costa County cops were cheating on college tests to obtain education-incentive pay raises.
The scope of the investigation later widened to include alleged violent crimes and drug trafficking and precipitated a cascade of scandals that has transformed the Antioch Police Department into one of the most scrutinized law enforcement agencies in California.
After seizing several officers’ cellphones, investigators stumbled upon thousands of racist and anti-gay text messages involving dozens of Antioch cops, shining a spotlight on racism within the department that many residents had been attempting to raise alarm bells over for years. Many of those text messages became public earlier this year in other court proceedings.
Antioch Mayor Lamar Thorpe, who has sought to reform the city’s police department, said Thursday that “today is a dark day in our city’s history, as people trusted to uphold the law allegedly breached that trust and were arrested by the FBI.”
Pittsburg Mayor Shanelle Scales-Preston noted Thursday that her city had reported the class cheating, and its officers weren’t implicated in the civil rights violations alleged in neighboring Antioch.
“This is a very serious issue for our East County communities and I am proud of our Pittsburg Police Department, which took a progressive and aggressive stance against this alleged wrongdoing,” Scales-Preston said. “The Pittsburg Police Department immediately reported this incident over 18 months ago, making the developments we’ve seen today possible.”
The scandal continues to rock the local criminal justice system. Prosecutors in federal and state court have dropped or dismissed dozens of cases that relied on the impugned officers, and Contra Costa County has allocated millions for attorneys to review thousands more criminal files for potential dismissal.
In Antioch, a civil rights lawyer has filed a federal class action suit intended to force oversight on the police department. And California Attorney General Rob Bonta is attempting the same with a civil rights investigation into the city, based on use-of-force trends that Bonta has called “disturbing” and that he said caught his eye before the criminal probe became known.
Amid the fallout from the investigations, several high-ranking Antioch officers have retired, including the city’s police chief, Steven Ford, and an acting captain has been hired to serve as interim chief while the city finds a replacement. Ford cited no specific reason for his early departure.
In a statement Antioch Acting Police Chief Joe Vigil called the arrests “disheartening” and said “any police officer who breaks public trust must be held accountable.”
John Burris, a longtime Bay Area civil rights attorney who filed a civil rights lawsuit against the city’s police department earlier this year, called Thursday’s indictments “a good first step towards cleaning up this department” and a validation of residents who have complained about it over the years.
Shagoofa Khan, a 23-year-old community activist who grew up in Antioch and said officers there put a tracker on her car and had disparaged her in racist and sexualized text messages, was relieved that the officers will be held accountable. “Finally,” she said of the indictments. “This process needs to conclude before the community can heal.”
Thorpe called the indictments “the beginning of the end of a long and arduous process” of reforming the city police department, validating his push to do so. “Seeking to reform the Antioch Police Department is not anti-police,” Thorpe said. “It is pro our residents and pro officers that have served and continue to serve with honor.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/08...ing-fbi-raid-following-grand-jury-indictment/
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