People could have been falsely charged with Failre To Register no thanks to this crooked cop.
California police supervisor altered sex offender registry to harass detective, lawsuit says
By JOSH CAIN | Southern California News Group
PUBLISHED: March 23, 2022 at 5:05 a.m. | UPDATED: March 23, 2022 at 5:07 a.m.
An Anaheim Police Department sex crimes detective said her supervisor altered data in the city’s sex offender registry she was in charge of maintaining to keep up a campaign of harassment he was waging against her, according to a lawsuit the detective filed against the city last month.
The lawsuit, filed Feb. 28 in Orange County Superior Court, revealed months of turmoil inside the city’s sex crimes unit in charge of not only investigating reported sex assaults and rapes in Anaheim, but also keeping tabs on hundreds of sex offenders who live in the city.
From January to October 2019, Detective Laura Lomeli said her supervisor, Sgt. Jeff Dodd, began harassing her after she complained about being the only detective in the sex crimes unit assigned to cover a protest and being denied overtime as a result.
The conflict between Lomeli and Dodd allegedly escalated from instances of Dodd ignoring her in front of her coworkers and writing up negative reviews of her job performance, to several apparent incidents in May and June 2019 involving the sex offender database.
In that time period, Dodd allegedly requested access to the database and altered the data without Lomeli’s knowledge.
“Despite being instructed to talk to Lomeli before accessing the database, Sgt. Dodd intentionally entered the database and sabotaged the data,” according to the suit.
“On several other occasions Sgt. Dodd sabotaged Lomeli’s work database by deleting information and importing improper data,” the complaint continued. “As a result of Sgt. Dodd’s intentional retaliation/harassment, Lomeli was forced to take time away from her other duties and correct the data.”
There are at least 550 sex offenders registered in the city’s database, which contains their names and addresses.
The suit, as well as a 2015 profile of Lomeli in “Behind the Badge,” a local law-enforcement funded blog, described Lomeli as the primary Anaheim officer in charge of tracking down those hundreds of registered sex offenders.
“Once a month on Monday, usually starting at 5 a.m. before most registrants have left for work, Lomeli and a detective team up to make compliance checks on registered sex offenders,” according to the Behind the Badge story.
“Many are on parole and wear a GPS device for monitoring. Some are not living where they say they are. Some are in the wind — in cop parlance, UTL, for unable to locate.”
Neither the Anaheim Police Department nor city officials would say whether the alleged altering of the database affected Lomeli’s ability to track sex offenders in the city. Mike Lyster, a city spokesman, said the city would not comment on the lawsuit.
According to the suit, the city initiated an administrative investigation into Dodd’s conduct. The investigation ended in December 2020 after finding that Lomeli’s allegations were “not sustained.”
However, the complaint stated that the city hired a private attorney to conduct a second investigation. That investigation ended in October 2021, “more than two years after (Lomeli’s) reported retaliation and harassment to HR.”
The private attorney’s findings led to a meeting between Anaheim Deputy Chief Rick Armendariz and Lomeli, in which the chief “acknowledged the unlawful behavior by Sgt. Dodd by apologizing to Lomeli for the treatment she suffered.” But the chief would not reveal the results of the investigation into Dodd when Lomeli asked.
“We don’t have any of that investigation file, so we wouldn’t know if they actually looked into that,” said Bijan Darvish, an attorney for Lomeli. “But we will get it … we will be filing a motion to get it.”
According to the suit, Dodd was transferred out of the sex crimes unit to the Anaheim police internal affairs unit. When reached by phone Tuesday, a desk officer for internal affairs said Dodd retired “about a month ago.”
Sgt. Shane Carringer, an Anaheim police spokesman, said the department would not release any information about the investigation into Dodd, saying it was a personnel matter. He confirmed Dodd retired around February.
The allegations in the suit indicated that Dodd’s alleged behavior had at least some effect on the sex crimes unit’s ability to investigate their cases.
The turmoil in the unit appeared to lead two Orange County District Attorney’s Office employees — a deputy district attorney and an investigator — to abandon a 15-year partnership with Anaheim police.
The suit describes the work environment in the unit as “toxic and detrimental to the proper performance of both the OCDA and the duties of the OCDA Investigator.” It quotes an internal message one of the employees sent describing the environment inside the sex crimes unit.
It says of Dodd, “Both myself and Danny (primarily Danny) have been witness to a lot of his behavior toward his employees, including Lomeli,” the D.A.’s office employee wrote, according to the suit. “A lot of what we have observed (again, mostly Danny’s observations) will not be helpful to him during the grievance process.”
Neither of the employees was fully named in the suit. Kimberly Edds, a spokeswoman for the D.A.’s office, refused comment about the lawsuit.
The statewide sex offender registry is maintained by the California Department of Justice with data from local law enforcement.
A California Department of Justice spokesman said Attorney General Rob Bonta’s office was “aware of the matter” involving the Anaheim sex offender database.
The spokesman said there was no indication that any errors introduced to the Anaheim database had “any impact on the information provided to our office.” But, he said the office was monitoring the situation “in case there are any developments.”
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.