There have been three Fairfield officers that have been found to be engaging in sexual misconduct with members of the public, while four others have sustained findings of dishonesty. These officers have withheld evidence, committed forgery or falsified reports. There have also been reports that other officers used a level of force that broke bones, required surgeries and killed two people. These are reports that have been released by the Fairfield Police Department after more than two decades of internal investigations.
As a response to The San Francisco Chronicle's request for public records, Fairfield officials released an overview of these incidents, in light of the state's new police transparency law SB1421 . This new law took effect of January 1st and lifted the curtain on California police personnel files, which for years have been shielded by some of the most stringent privacy laws in the country.
After decades, the public now has access to findings of sexual assault misconduct by officers while on duty. The records that Fairfield released go back to 1996 and detail the location of the incident, the officers' names, and a brief summary of the conduct and what type of discipline, if any, was taken.
The disclosure of these reports provides a glimpse into the concealed universe of California police internal investigations, and clues as to how one Bay Area agency polices its own.
According to these reports, Officer Joseph Griego is named in two cases, one that occurred in January of 2015 and the other in May 2015. In the January incident the officer was investigated for several performance and conduct violations at a small shopping center. His actions were reported as physical advances on multiple victims and all four violations in those cases were sustained. Internal affairs officials recommended a 20-day suspension for the first case and termination for the second. Griego then retired in Nov of 2015.
In another case, investigators reportedly found five sustained violations against Officer Darryl Webb stemming in August of 2015. These violations included engaging in on-duty sexual relations with a member of the public, including but not limited to sexual intercourse, or other sexual contact.
Criminal charges were reportedly filed against Webb and he resigned on May 31st, 2016. Though there are no details to the nature of the allegations, the Daily Republic reported that he pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor in a 2016 revenge porn case.
The list of misconduct within the Fairfield Police Department is long. More thorough reports have been requested from the department. Now that SB1421 has been enacted, news outlets are requesting records from multiple Bay Area law enforcement agencies. Many have stated they will follow the new law, yet several police agencies in Contra Costa County and Southern California are challenging the law in court. Their attorneys are arguing that the new law shouldn't be applied retroactively and thus doesn't apply to records created before 2019. However, in a letter written to the California State Senate, bill author Senator Nancy Skinner stated that SB1421 was intended to apply to all disclosable records, including those that existed before the statute went into effect.
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