Internal affairs and criminal investigations are running due several Oakland police officers who allegedly had sex with an underage girl, KPIX 5 reported Thursday. Mayor Libby Schaaf assured to hold Oakland police officers accountable.
The Alameda County District Attorney is conducting an “independent and parallel investigation,” Shaaf claimed.
According to the sources, internal affairs investigation is focusing on a young woman who calls herself Celeste Guap. The young lady, who was underage at the time, began to reveal details of her relationships with officers on her Facebook page recently.
Oakland police headquarters “value and respect” people’s right to know the details of the progress of the investigation, as well as the way officers conduct themselves off and while they’re on duty, Schaaf said on Friday. Residents should expect officers to be held to the highest standards, Schaaf added.
Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf qualified as “very disturbing” plenty of misconduct allegations against some of the city’s police officers. He added that the accusations could seriously affect efforts to build trust with the public.
The battle to gain the public’s trust
“This type of misconduct doesn’t do justice to the citizens of Oakland and does an injustice to a (police) department that has made tremendous progress,” Schaaf said a late Friday afternoon at a news conference at City Hall, where she was joined by Police Chief Sean Whent.
Schaaf considers that is a tragedy that this officer’s conduct is happening at this time. Mostly because, even when there’s still a lot of work to do, the department has been working really hard to gain citizen’s trust.
In order to ensure that the District Attorney’s investigations are unbiased, no former officers who work as investigators for the District Attorney will be allowed to get involved in the probes, said Schaaf. She added that she also issued an executive order requesting that the District Attorney’s Office must be notified of any future suspicions of wrongdoing on the part of Oakland officers.
It’s tragic that district attorneys succumb to media pressure, which implies not making charging decisions based on the evidence, said Attorney Mike Rains.
Misconduct allegations against the three officers are causing a lot of trouble, so Whent asked his department’s inspector general to look at every alleged officer misconduct incidents in the past years.
Source: CBS Local