A Palo Alto Police Department detective has been disciplined for sending a supervisor a picture of a “scantily clad” woman he found on her cellphone while investigating her involvement in an alleged burglary, according to a new independent police auditor’s report.

The report by Michael Gennaco and Stephen Connolly of the Southern California-based OIR Group did not name the detective or say how he was disciplined. The date of the incident was also excluded but it took place during the first half of 2014, the period covered by the report.

Hired eight years ago to monitor internal investigations, the independent police auditor largely agreed with the department’s handling of the incident but found fault with some aspects.

The woman was being interrogated at the police station about her involvement in an alleged burglary, according to the report released Wednesday. At one point, a detective took her cellphone to check it for evidence.

“On the cellphone, the detective located a photograph of the arrestee in which she was scantily clad,” Gennaco and Connolly wrote.

The detective sent the picture via text message to a supervisory detective who was also working on the investigation, according to the report.

The cellphone was returned to the woman and she was asked to help retrieve information about the person to whom she was planning to hand off the stolen goods, according to the report. She noticed that the photograph had been sent and complained to a different detective.

The supervisory detective eventually reported the incident to a sergeant, according to the report.

According to the report, an internal investigation opened by the sergeant determined that there was “no legitimate reason for the detective ‘texting’ the photograph in the way and manner that he did, and that, in fact, the conduct could have easily left someone with the impression that it was sent as a joke.”

“PAPD concluded that the detective exercised poor judgment by sending the photograph, that the act was unbecoming for an officer and disrespectful to the arrestee, and that it reflected unfavorably upon the department and its members,” Gennaco and Connolly wrote.

The detective was “held accountable” for violating department policy, according to the report.

The independent police auditor said the department’s investigation was “thorough” and agreed with its findings and analysis. But they were concerned that it took the supervisory detective more than two weeks to report the incident to the sergeant, though the delay may have been due in part to “non-overlapping” work schedules, according to the report.

“Nonetheless, the gap was problematic and worth managerial attention,” Gennaco and Connolly wrote.

“The IPA (independent police auditor) has discussed this concern with command staff at PAPD and it is clear the leaders of the department share this concern,” they continued. “The IPA recommends that the need to promptly report such activity be personally reinforced to the acting supervisory detective by the highest levels of PAPD command staff.”

As a result of its review, the independent police auditor uncovered two other flaws related to the investigation.

The first was the sergeant’s instruction to the supervisory detective to delete the picture from his cellphone. The sergeant said he wanted to prevent it from being distributed again.

“While the sergeant’s intentions were good, it would have been preferable to obtain a ‘screen shot’ or some other evidentiary preservation of the photograph before deleting it,” Gennaco and Connolly wrote.

Leaders in the department “acknowledged the legitimacy” of the point but argued that it was important to prevent the photograph from being distributed again, according to the report.

Detectives assigned to the burglary case also displayed a “laxity of vigilance” when they asked the woman to help them locate evidence on her cellphone. By their own admission, they did not closely monitor her while she scrolled through her cellphone, according to the report.

“During this period, she could have deleted information from the phone that possessed evidentiary value,” Gennaco and Connolly wrote.

Leaders in the department agreed that the woman should have been supervised more closely, according to the report.

Lt. Zach Perron, a spokesman for the department, said he was prevented by state law from discussing the investigation.

“As the matters discussed in the IPA report are part of a peace officer personnel file, and since they were also the subject of an internal administrative investigation, we are not able to provide any further details on the case than are already included in the report,” Perron wrote in an email.

“The IPA releases more facts of internal administrative investigations than we are able to release ourselves. We can only confirm that the information contained in the report is accurate.”

In recent weeks, a similar incident involving a California Highway Patrol officer came to light. Sean Harrington, who resigned in October, has pleaded not guilty to two felony charges for secretly searching two young female DUI suspects’ phones during separate arrests and stealing copies of their explicit photos. The photos were shared with other officers.

Cynthia Sumida, a spokeswoman for the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office, in response to a question about whether potential charges against the Palo Alto detective were contemplated, stated in an email that the office was leaving comments about the case to Perron.

Palo Alto City Attorney Molly Stump said that while the CHP officer’s case may have “some parallels superficially” to the Palo Alto case, “they are actually quite different in scope,” due to fact there was only one photo and “the context of what occurred.”

Bay City News contributed to this report.

Email Jason Green at jgreen@dailynewsgroup.com; follow him at twitter.com/jgreendailynews.