Enter the username on file and we'll send you a code to reset your password. As darkness falls, the most tattered section of this town's main drag feels more desperate with each passing hour. Under the cover of night, a slow but steady flow of wandering souls emerges โ addicts, prostitutes, drifters. Sergio Alvarez knew the pickings were easy. As a rookie officer on the West Sacramento police force, Alvarez was assigned to the overnight shift on a beat that included West Capitol Avenue โ a one-time Las Vegas-style strip now lined with low-rise motels that rent rooms by the week or the hour.
Most officers are more than happy to eventually escape the post, but Alvarez volunteered to stay on late-night duty. Over his nearly six years on the job, he gained seniority and almost always patrolled alone. With the solitude came opportunity. MPR News helps you turn down the noise and build shared understanding.
Turn up your support for this public resource and keep trusted journalism accessible to all. Alvarez is a poster child of a predator cop โ and also of the flaws in policies, technological glitches, and culture of policing that can allow such behavior to go unnoticed or unpunished until it's too late. It also has left a new chief taking a hard look at the way the department does business.
But it makes it even worse when you are, in one way, shape or form, a contributing factor to them being hurt," said Tom McDonald, a former captain with the Los Angeles Police Department who took over in West Sacramento after Alvarez's arrest.
A yearlong Associated Press investigation illuminated the problem of rape and sexual misconduct committed by law officers in the United States, uncovering about 1, cops, jail guards, deputies and others who lost their licenses from through for such incidents. Most certainly there are even more than that, because some states did not provide records and others, including New York and California, said they do not decertify officers for misconduct.
