FBI raids Northern California police departments amid racism, corruption investigation

ANTIOCH, Calif. (CN) — The FBI early Thursday morning raided two Northern California cities mired in scandal over racism and misconduct discovered within their police forces, according to investigators. 

Charges against officers from Antioch and Pittsburg, located east of the San Francisco Bay Area, followed an 18-month federal investigation, The East Bay Times reported.

The arrested officers appeared Thursday morning in front of Chief U.S. Magistrate Judge Donna Ryu, after a federal grand jury in San Francisco released at least three indictments charging current and former officers with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy against rights, deprivation of rights and falsification or destruction of records. 

Antioch Officers Morteza Amiri and Eric Rombough; former Antioch Officers Daniel Harris and Timothy Manly-Williams; Pittsburg Officers Patrick Berhan, Brauli Rodriguez-Jalapa, Ernesto Mejia-Orozco and Amanda Theodosy; and Antioch Community Services Officer Samantha Peterson are named defendants in the indictments, according to the Northern District of California.

Ismail Ramsey, U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California, held a press conference Thursday at San Francisco’s federal courthouse with FBI Special Agent Robert Tripp. According to Tripp, arrest warrants were served across the United States, including in Hawaii and Texas. 

Ramsey said the investigation is ongoing, and criminal charges filed against the officers so far are wide-ranging. They include conspiracy to violate civil rights, wire fraud, distributing anabolic steroids, civil rights violations, destruction and falsification of evidence and obstruction of justice. 

Six officers face charges of conspiracy to defraud police departments by claiming they earned college credits toward degrees, when they actually hired people to take exams for them. They earned college fee reimbursements and salary raises as a result, Ramsey said. 

Two face charges of conspiracy to distribute illegally obtained steroids, and another is charged with destroying records to try to block the federal investigation. Civil rights violations named in another indictment using illegal uses of force and dogs against people, which some officers bragged about in text messages, Ramsey said. 

“Police officers, take note,” he said. “Police officers promise both to enforce laws to protect the public and to protect the rights of the accused. That’s the job.”

Tripp said the investigation has been one of the San Francisco attorney’s office’s highest priorities. He added that so-called “color of law” charges mean that officers violated the trust of the public.

“They undermine public confidence in the law and law enforcement, and erode fundamental rights of our citizens,” Tripp said. “Any breach of the public’s trust is unacceptable.”

The next court appearances for all officers arrested are being scheduled, Ramsey added. 

The probe began in early 2022 after the FBI and Contra Costa District Attorney got a tip that some East Contra Costa County police officers had cheated on college tests to get education incentive pay bumps. The local and federal investigation soon turned up evidence of racist and homophobic behavior among police officers, and led to scrutiny of the handling of many violent crime and drug trafficking cases.

Dozens of virulent text messages in Antioch police officers’ group chats, many containing racist and homophobic slurs, were reported between 2019 and 2022, according to the Contra Costa County District Attorney’s Office. Those texts were in a pair of reports dated March 27 and March 28, part of a larger investigation by the FBI and district attorney’s office first reported by the Times. 

In the texts, officers said they berated people because of their race, falsified evidence and brutalized Black and brown suspects. The messages were sent by 17 named officers of the 100-person Antioch police force, including the president of the Antioch police union. The county public defender has said that nearly half of the department was included in the text chains, yet nobody reported the messages.

More than 40% of the department’s 99 officers could be implicated in the scandal, city leaders say, and 38 are on paid leave. The current city manager was placed on leave during the process, and four people who say they were targeted by police officers who boasted about fabricating evidence and beating suspects filed a federal civil rights lawsuit on April 19. A fifth plaintiff is suing on behalf of his father, who was shot and killed by two of the officers involved in the text scandal. 

Prosecutors in federal and state court have either dropped or dismissed dozens of cases involving the officers under investigation and the county has spent millions of dollars on attorneys reviewing thousands of other files.

Several high-ranking Antioch officers have retired, including the city’s police chief, who was replaced in the interim by a lieutenant serving as an acting captain.

In May, California Attorney General Rob Bonta launched his own investigation into the Antioch Police Department to determine whether the agency has engaged in a pattern or practice of unconstitutional policing.

The California Constitution gives the attorney general power to conduct civil investigations into whether a law enforcement agency has a pattern or practice of breaking the law. Separate from local and federal investigations, the goal is to identify, and potentially compel the correction of, systemic violations of the Constitutional rights of the community at large by a law enforcement agency. 

Antioch Councilmember Monica Wilson said she was “deeply concerned” by the news of the raid.

“We shouldn’t generalize based on the actions of a few,” Wilson wrote in a statement emailed to Courthouse News. “We will work diligently to understand the details and to ensure full accountability. We must do better.”

Another city leader, Antioch Councilmember Tamisha Walker, emphasized that the events of the investigation played out over several years.

“I would say that today is a day to reflect and find our way forward as a community. We have been gifted unprecedented opportunity to reimagine public safety in the city of Antioch which is not solely invested in hyper surveillance and law enforcement,” Walker said. “I believe that city leaders who have turned a blind to the harms committed by this police department have an opportunity to reconcile the community with public policy that centers the needs of our most vulnerable residents.”

Contra Costa County’s District Attorney and city managers in Antioch and Pittsburg did not immediately respond to requests for comment.