2023-08-18 04:02:33
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Nine current and former Northern California police officers were indicted Thursday in a federal anti-corruption investigation that found evidence they violated civil rights, fraud to get pay increases and lied in reports to cover up the excessive use of force, federal authorities said.
Ismail J. Ramsey, the United States Attorney for the Northern District of California, filed the four indictments outlining the charges, including wire fraud, disenfranchisement under the guise of legality, conspiracy to violate rights, and conspiracy to distribute steroids. anabolic. Nine police officers and a community service agent were charged, although only two are charged in multiple indictments.
The investigation focused on the Antioch and Pittsburgh police departments, two cities in the San Francisco Bay Area. Only three of the officers are still employed by the departments and were not on active duty, officials said.
Arrest warrants were served Thursday in California, Texas and Hawaii, said Robert Tripp, special agent in charge of the FBI’s San Francisco office. One of the defendants has not yet been arrested.
Morteza Amiri, Eric Allen Rombough, Patrick Berhan, Samantha Peterson, Brauli Rodriguez Jalapa and Ernesto Juan Mejia-Orozco have pleaded not guilty to various charges, and most have been released on condition that they leave property as collateral, it reported. Bay Area News Group.
The defendants might be sentenced to decades in prison if convicted as charged.
“Any breach of the public trust is completely unacceptable,” Tripp said, citing charges once morest the Antioch officers that included taking advantage of their officer status to disenfranchise people.
According to charges filed once morest Amiri, Rombough, and Devon Christopher Wenger, the three Antioch police officers colluded from February 2019 to March 2022 “to injure, oppress, threaten, and intimidate the people of Antioch, California,” and then forged reports on meetings.
In vulgarity-laden text messages, the three men referred to some suspects as “bouncers.” They laughed and joked regarding harming people who had apparently given up or appeared to be asleep by throwing Amiri’s police dog at them or shooting them with a “less-lethal” 40mm projectile launcher, the indictment says.
Prosecutors say that from 2019 to 2021, the dog bit 28 people, while Rombough used the pitcher 11 times in 2020 and 2021.
Amiri posted graphic photos of the injuries inflicted by the dog, and Rombough said he saved the projectiles to make a trophy flag, according to the indictment.
In one case, a man suspected of five armed robberies had surrendered and was lying on the ground when Amiri’s police dog bit him, according to the indictment.
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