Officers in Oakland Police Sex Abuse Scandal Fired, Suspended

In a protracted scandal that has rocked the Oakland Police Department for more than a year, Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf announced Wednesday that 4 police officers will be fired and seven others suspended without pay for their involvement in a sordid series of affairs entailing three officers committing statutory rape against an underaged woman worker named Celeste Guap. The young sex worker claims that she had sexual encounters with over two dozen officers in the Bay Area region.

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The officers were found guilty of attempted sexual assault, engaging in lewd conduct, assisting in the crime of prostitution and accessing law enforcement databases for personal gain, among other offenses, Schaaf told the LA Times. Organizers, frustrated with a culture of impunity and lawlessness that seemingly permeated the scandal-ridden department, had called for Schaaf's resignation earlier this Summer over the charges, which revolve around officers’ abuse of the teen sex worker, who first met with the men along a stretch of International Boulevard that is notorious for sex-trafficking.

The seven suspended officers were reprimanded for failing to report the ongoing sexual misconduct. An eighth officer will also be obliged to undergo counseling and training for “bringing disrepute” to the department.

“I want to send a clear message to the victims of sexual abuse and exploitation living in our city. We see you. We hear you, and we are here to help you,” Schaaf said at a news conference. “And to those who exploit these victims and profit or take pleasure in their pain, we see you too.”

The scandal first came to light in June, sparking national outrage, when the woman said in a television interview she had slept with more than a dozen of the city’s police officers, with many of the instances having occurred when she was underage. She also claimed that she had had sex with some of the officers in exchange for details about planned prostitution raids.

The case continues to spread shockwaves across at least seven law enforcement agencies in the San Francisco Bay Area region. Some officers were cleared of charges due to Guap being 18 at the time and old enough to consent to her sexual encounters with the law enforcement officers, while the OPD cycled through four different police chiefs in a matter of 10 days due to the scandal.

Demonstrators against the Oakland police in June. | Photo: Facebook / Anti Police-Terror Project

According to the East Bay Express, the Richmond Police Department had gathered funding to send the young woman to rehabilitation in Florida, where she has since been charged with attacking a security guard at the rehab facility. The incident has raised questions about why a police agency would send a key witness in a major police misconduct investigation out of state with possible charges looming.

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“We are not happy about this,” Schaff said when asked about the woman’s situation.

The aftermath of the scandal comes after investigators analyzed over 78,000 pages of social media conversations, more than 28,000 text messages, and interviewed more than 50 witnesses over the past 11 months. The woman at the center of the scandal herself was interviewed 11 separate times.

This isn’t the Oakland Police Department's first controversial mishap. In 2003, it was placed under a federal consent decree to settle a lawsuit that involved allegations of both rampant abuse and biased enforcement by officers.