Richmond Police Misconduct Investigation Final Report

Richmond Police Department
Office of the Chief of Police

1701 Regatta Boulevard, Richmond, CA 94804-7409
Bus: (510) 621-1802 Fax: (510) 620-6880
FINAL REPORT: POLICE MISCONDUCT INVESTIGATION
Dear City Manager Bill Lindsay, Mayor Tom Butt and City Councilmembers,
Our investigation is now finished. I'm sorry that the alleged misconduct of a few has
brought embarrassment to the City and to the RPD - embarrassment exacerbated by
continuous news media coverage of the salacious Bay Area sex scandal news story.
We've taken these matters very seriously. I made the investigation the top priority of
our Office of Professional Accountability (OPA) - to learn all of the facts as quickly as
practical, and without cutting corners so that informed business decisions could be
made. Our investigation focused on Richmond employees. Each case is unique. We
found no conspiracies. The facts show individual, unconnected, non-criminal
engagements and other activities that violate multiple Department policies and the
professional Code of Ethics on the part of several RPD officers.
The OPA concentrated on both on-duty and off-duty behavior related to an adult female
teenager, a self-admitted sex worker - proclaimed to have had sexual encounters with
many police officers representing multiple Bay Area justice agencies. Police officers
are held to a higher standard with regard to both their personal and professional
conduct because the nature of their duties requires the public's trust. Integrity is
indispensable to the position of police officer.
We were first alerted to hints of potential involvement between one or more RPD
officers and the teenager in mid-May 2016. The facts on confidential matters pertaining
to police personnel investigations cannot be shared among agencies, so we had no
named or accused employees to focus on at that time. OPA investigators undertook
efforts to locate communication links between the adult teenager and Richmond police
employees as the initial phase of an official inquiry. KRON4 News aired a story on May
23 wherein it was represented that the teenager insinuated - by cell phone text
message attribution - that she'd had sexual encounters with officers of the Richmond
Police Department. See http://kron4.com/2016/05/23/kron4-investigation-oaklandpolice-sex-scandal-expands/
"Community Policing Dedicated to Superior Service"
www.richmondpd.net www.facebook.com/richmondpolicecali
We substantiated actual connections between the teenager and several of our police
officers the first week of June. OPA fact gathering efforts identified and zeroed in on
eleven (11) current and former (at the time of alleged misconduct) Richmond police
officers who became subject to the investigation. Investigators reviewed more than
10,000 text messages and cellular telephone records, over 5,000 social media pages,
and they contacted 45 individuals. They used 750 work hours to complete the
investigation, including 13 hours of recorded, voluntary testimony from the teenage
witness, over the course of five separate interview sessions. The final investigative
report contains 275 pages of critical facts.
From the beginning we've been very limited on public comments about these matters
because overlapping confidentiality and privacy laws and covenants cover or
interconnect on various aspects of this super unusual set of very complex
circumstances. Contemporaneously, we've exercised heightened caution in order to
protect the integrity of the investigation, the facts of which establish the legal basis for
us to take job action against employees subject to this investigation, as is justifiable and
in proportion to sustained violations. I issued a department directive to all RPO
employees on June 14, 2016 alerting them to this investigation and instructing members
not to engage in speculation or rumor-spreading; not to leak information to the news
media; and to immediately report any known information that could be pertinent to this
investigation to the OPA.
All government employees have Fourth Amendment privacy protections granted by the
US Constitution over their jobs - and in California, police officers have a more detailed
set of protections spelled out under The Public Safety Officers' Procedural Bill of Rights
Act. Each separate violation of the Act results in a $25,000.00 fine. The names of five
(5) RPO officers subject to our investigation have already been leaked, and then outed
by the news media on July 30, 2016, and now a part of the public record, so any
protected information that's easily traced back to any of them is a potential violation .
See http://www.eastbaytimes.com/2016/06/30/opd-sex-scandal-sheriffs-deputy-resignsrichmond-officers-named/
Accordingly, I cannot provide a detailed accounting on corrective and or punitive
recommendations affecting the subjects of our investigation. Recommendations vary in
severity and span the graduated scale of options, and range from termination from
employment to letters of reprimand and corrective counseling - all in proportion to the
respective employees' sustained misconduct violation(s). The investigation also

exonerated/eliminated some.
The conduct of the OPA investigation entailed interviewing many people, both
employees and members of the public, and the reading/review of various documents
and many electronic records. Every attempt was made to corroborate information with
multiple sources. The credibility of information gathered was reviewed using several
factors, including, but not limited to:
The source of the information
The basis of witness knowledge
Corroborating information
Time period between relevant events and when any complaint relating to those
events was reported
The motivation of those offering information
The ordinary training, experience and common sense of the investigator
The investigation also involved the gathering and analysis of evidence upon which to
base findings. The U.S. Department of Justice Standards and Guidelines for Internal
Affairs Investigations methodology was used to conduct and adjudicate this
investigation. Here are the general principles:
1. The burden to prove all allegations is on the agency.
2. The standard of proof is a preponderance of the evidence.
3. The standards of evidence are those of administrative law, not criminal law.
4. No presumptions of truth are made regarding facts in dispute.
5. No presumptions are made regarding witness credibility. All persons are equally
credible unless an objective, fact-based evaluation of the witnesses' capacities,
testimonial coherence, and other relevant and demonstrable factors justify
otherwise.
We were purposeful in trying to protect the human dignity of the teenage witness since
we opened our investigation, despite her lack of reticence to be so publicly
braggadocious about her own behavior and health issues. We can't comment on those
matters - doing so could violate various privacy protections guaranteed under the law.
Federal HIPPA privacy protections, as well as the California Penal Code, and
Government Code privacy protections that cover victims of certain crime types are
among statutes we have to consider.
Extensive Bay Area news media coverage has cultivated ongoing interest in this story,
so I understand how a lack of "official" information out to the public on how things are
progressing could be frustrating, and even raise integrity concern over the process. I
wish that I could share more. Please know that we remain committed to holding our
police officers to a higher standard of both personal and professional conduct.
OPA investigators held multiple voluntary interviews with the teenage witness during the
conduct of the investigation. Early on, her prior victimization (not affiliated with the sex
scandal) was discussed. That victim status - as documented in the prior Richmond
criminal case - became the qualifying event for crime victim/witness assistance to aid
her and her family in getting the help that she was seeking. Addiction and related
treatment choices are health/medical issues protected by federal HIPPA laws, and the
options that the affected can choose are not something that police can compel.
Representations that we "sent" this teenage witness away or had her "removed" to
Florida distort reality. Her ultimate choice was no sudden revelation either - it was
publically disclosed in early July 2016. See http://abc7news .com/news/i-team-exclusivecops-want-to-send-witness-in-g rowing-sex-scandal-to-rehab-3000-mi les-away/1416574/
Addiction is a powerful behavioral impairment that can be difficult for individuals to
overcome without medical treatment. The teenager, in consult with her family, made a
choice to seek inpatient treatment. Although live-in care has advantages, affordability
was an issue for them. Our Domestic & Sexual Violence Unit (DSVU) personnel,
housed at the Family Justice Center, worked to support the teenager's application working with her and her family - to the California Victim Compensation Program
(CalVCP) for help with expenses. Visit http://vcgcb.ca.gov/victims/ for more information.
CalVCP can help victims pay for certain types of expenses. Although the teenager
changed her mind on treatment initially, her application for relief remained active with
the California Victim Compensation Board, and it was ultimately funded.
COR did not pay for rehab or any related expense.
Various legal and other privacy restrictions apply, so we cannot offer a more granular
public report on this personnel investigation. We've strategically withheld certain
details, not because we're trying to hide the truth, or hide from it but to protect privacy.
Every public statement that we could make about this case invites more questions than
we can answer without significant consequence. No criminal matters are at issue.
There is no compromise on behavior that undermines the professionalism of the RPO.
This applies to all employees, both sworn and civilian. What is promising about the
status quo are recent audit results on 2015 officer complaints. It revealed that 61 % of
them were generated internally - and of internal complaints, 36% were initiated by other
officers. These statistics suggest a working environment wherein it's acceptable to call
attention to other employees' suspected wrongdoing.
Thank you again for trusting the process, and many thanks for your trust and support of
the professional men and women of the Richmond Police Department. I'm available to
answer any follow up questions that you may have.
Allwyn Brown
Chief of Police
The substance of this report can be shared publicly.

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Richmond Police Department

Office of the Chief of Police

FINAL REPORT: POLICE MISCONDUCT INVESTIGATION

"Community Policing Dedicated to Superior Service"

respective employees' sustained misconduct violation(s). The investigation also

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