Some California Highway Patrol officers working in the Los Angeles office have been stealing nude pictures from cellphones taken from arrested women, according to a sworn search warrant that was reported on Saturday.
A CHP officer in the San Francisco Bay Area has confessed to stealing nude pictures of a suspected drunken driver from her phone, as she was being processed at a jail in Martinez, the Contra Costa Times reported today.
The officer, Sean Harrington, 35, told prosecutors that sending copies of compromising photos from cellphones was a common “game” that he learned in the CHP Los Angeles office.
At least one CHP officer in the Bay Area has been suspended in connection with what CHP Commissioner Joe Farrow said were “allegations (that) anger and disgust me.” But the CHP did not make clear if that officer was Harrington.
“We expect the highest levels of of integrity and moral strength from everyone in the CHP, and there is no place in our organization for such behavior,” he told the Bay Area newspaper.
An investigator working for the Contra Costa County district attorney said in a sworn affidavit that two CHP officers had engaged in a “scheme to unlawfully access the cell phones of female arrestees by intentionally gaining access to their cell phone and, without their knowledge, stealing and retaining nude or partially clothed photos of them.”
That behavior, according to the search warrant, constitutes felony theft.
The victim, a 29-year-old woman from San Ramon, had a blood alcohol content of .29. That level of intoxication is considered severe by the courts, but she had her drunken driving charges dismissed because of the apparent misconduct.
Harrington, the arresting officer, had possession of the phone while at least one nude photo was transmitted to a second CHP officer, Robert Hazelwood. The two CHP officers then sent comments back and forth, commenting on her “rocking” body, according to the affidavit.
Records about the sent photos were somehow deleted from the woman’s phone, but copies were retained on the woman’s Apple iCloud account, and she later found them on her synced iPad.
Harrington confessed to the D.A.’s investigator that he had stolen six photos and sent one to Hazelwood.
“Harrington said he first learned of this scheme when hew worked in the Los Angeles office,” the investigator said in his sworn search warrant.
The court documents also describe texts between the two officers, in which photos of a 19-year-old woman suspected of drunken driving were sent from Harrington to Hazelwood.
The photos showed the DUI suspect in a bikini, and the affidavit said Hazelwood texted back a question: “No f—— nudes?”
—City News Service