You can't make this stuff up, and you don’t need to wait to watch it on Netflix. Fortunately (or not), if you live in the Bay Area, you don't have to. You just wait for the next police scandal.
1. A sex scandal that has rocked the Oakland Police Department in recent days might also include a murder case involving a now-dead cop who possibly killed his wife in 2014, reports Darwin BondGraham and Ali Winston for the East Bay Express. There is evidence that Officer Brendan O'Brien, who shot himself last fall, had killed his wife, Irma Huerta Lopez, the year before after she found out that he and several other Oakland cops were having sex with an underage girl - who also happens to be the daughter of an OPD dispatcher.
It's not just possibly murder most foul. It's possibly coverup most crappy as well.
Huerta Lopez's coroner's report, however, noted that there was no visible gunshot residue on her hands. There is no mention of whether O'Brien's hands were ever swabbed or tested for traces of gunshot residue in the report...
The sister explained that OPD never released Huerta Lopez's property, including her cell phone that she was carrying the night she died at O'Brien's apartment.
These sex allegations, and the possibly botched internal-affairs and criminal investigations, only became public after US District Judge Thelton Henderson issued an unprecedented order on March 23. The judge cited "irregularities" and "violations" of procedures by Oakland police detectives in charge of the sexual-misconduct inquiry, and he called into question the department's commitment to accountability and reform.
This is a police department, OPD, which is still under a Federal Monitor for civil rights violations from fourteen years ago!
You may note we haven't gotten to Lies and Videotape yet. That's because we have to cross the Bay Bridge, where SFPD has not been having, shall we say, the best of times. Extrajudicial executions by firing squad, racist and homophobic texting scandals, a Blue Ribbon panel report on a police department completely out of control and unaccountable, and elected officials calling for the Chief of Police’s head. And just in...
Today's San Francisco Chronicle's front page story notes how a Federal Judge just lambasted a San Francisco police officer for testilying. Yup, yet another police officer was caught by a surveillance videotape making shit up about what happened and why he arrested a man walking down the street. (Video is in the article). Shocking indeed.
As the article notes, most of the time, when a judge views these kinds of contradictions, the case is quietly dismissed. Not yesterday. Not quietly.
"The worst thing in the world is the prosecution and conviction of an innocent person, or a conviction based on perjured testimony," U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer said after granting prosecutors' request to drop charges against Brandon Simpson. "The affront is to all of us. ... I am not enraged, but I am deeply saddened."
...
The judge ordered federal prosecutors to provide records of the proceedings to Police Chief Greg Suhr for "whatever action he considers appropriate." Breyer said the case also showed that police should be required to wear cameras at all times.
...
“In San Francisco state courts, we've had our share of cases where videos have directly contradicted what police testified to. ... In most cases, the judge does not utter a word, and the case is dismissed," said [Public Defender Jeff] Adachi, who was not involved in Thursday's federal case. "I applaud Judge Breyer for acknowledging the seriousness of perjury by police."
There's only one plausible solution to the rot and corruption that permeates the police departments on both sides of the Bay. The Police Chiefs need to fire their whole departments. The Mayors need to then fire their Police Chiefs. And then the Mayors need to resign in disgrace.