VALLEJO — The alleged California Highway Patrol “game” of secretly trading explicit cellphone photos of female suspects among officers was isolated to the Dublin office, the agency’s Golden Gate Division chief said late Saturday night.

But the attorney representing a 23-year-old San Ramon woman who was allegedly a victim of the photo-sharing scheme blasted that premise on Sunday, saying he wasn’t reassured by Chief Avery Browne’s statement that the practice isn’t widespread.

“This particular instance was only discovered by my client by chance — and it’s a reasonable speculation to imagine how often it has occurred undetected,” said a statement issued by Rick Madsen, the woman’s Danville attorney. “Who knows how many officers have participated in this so-called ‘game,’ or how many more women have been victimized?”

Browne acknowledged that a similar incident at a CHP office in Los Angeles occurred two years ago, as reported by this newspaper. But he said witnesses and “every member of command” at the Dublin office have been interviewed during the investigation — and Contra Costa County prosecutors told him that they do not believe it reaches outside the East Bay office.

At Saturday night’s impromptu news conference to discuss the growing controversy, Browne called the allegations involving the Dublin-based officers “disappointing” and “disgusting.” He then thanked the San Ramon woman, who had discovered that six explicit photos stored on her iPhone were allegedly forwarded to her arresting CHP officer’s personal phone and shared with at least one other officer following her DUI arrest in August.

Investigators in the Contra Costa County District Attorney’s Office said the photo exchange led to a crass stream of text messages between the two officers.

“The callousness and depravity with which these officers commented about women is dehumanizing, horribly offensive and degrading to all women,” Browne said. “This behavior gravely undermines the public’s trust in our ability to perform our duties and creates unnecessary mistrust and skepticism (about) law enforcement.”

The Contra Costa District Attorney’s Office said it will decide this week whether to file criminal charges.

Browne’s condemnation of the allegations were the strongest words yet from the state agency, whose leaders have spoken little about the specifics in a case that has shocked and disappointed the public and the law enforcement community.

The chief said he was first briefed on the district attorney’s investigation Oct. 8, shortly before the DA started serving search warrants on Officer Sean Harrington’s Martinez house and Officer Robert Hazelwood’s cellphone. He said he immediately launched an internal investigation.

Browne told reporters that the first officer accused in the scheme has been barred from coming to work and that the second officer has been pulled from his patrol duties. A third officer mentioned in court documents is considered a witness and has not been relieved from his normal duties, Browne said.

While the purported scheme to steal explicit photos off unsuspecting female arrestees’ phones seems unbelievable to some, there have been several similar incidents over the years in which law enforcement officers were accused of strikingly similar plots. None were charged with crimes.

Browne provided further details about a 2012 CHP incident in the Los Angeles area in which the department found that two unidentified officers “allegedly accessed information on computers and individuals’ telephones.” One officer was fired and another quit as the investigation was concluding, he said. No victims came forward in the case, the chief said.

Harrington told DA investigators he learned of the photo-sharing scheme while working at a Los Angeles CHP office and saw it practiced in the Dublin office, according to court records. He also told investigators he took photos from about a “half-dozen” female arrestees in the last “several years,” according to a search warrant.

Oakland attorney and mayoral candidate Dan Siegel, who represented a victim in a similar Morgan Hill case, questioned whether officers are receiving proper training in handling cellphones, particularly after a June U.S. Supreme Court decision requiring departments to get warrants before searching suspects’ phones.

“They’re acting like a bunch of junior high students,” Siegel said.

In 2011, after her arrest on suspicion of public drunkenness by a Morgan Hill police officer, Casey Serrano alleged that a corporal found a nude photo stored on her phone and uploaded it to her Facebook profile while she was in custody. Serrano said another officer accessed her phone and deleted photos of his patrol car, according to court documents and Siegel.

An internal investigation found then-Cpl. Mindy Zen uploaded a photo in which Serrano’s naked breast was exposed onto Serrano’s Facebook account, Siegel said.

“She was really embarrassed by that. Fortunately, it was not up that long before one of her friends called her,” Siegel said. “But you never know how many people see something like that — and it can be reposted.”

Serrano filed a claim against the city and received a $75,000 settlement, Siegel said. Zen was demoted and Officer David Ray, who deleted the photos, was fired. He sued for wrongful termination, and in August a judge ruled that Ray’s conduct was “egregious” when he arrested the Gilroy woman and her friend without probable cause and tampered with her cellphone to eliminate photos of his transgressions, according to court documents described in a Morgan Hill Times report.

In May, a Long Island woman, Pamela Held, sued a New York police officer and the city of New York, alleging that nude photos stored on her phone were forwarded to her arresting officer’s personal cellphone while she was in custody, according to federal court documents.

“It makes me sick,” Held told the New York Daily News. “I don’t even want to think about what he’s done with them.”

The officer, Sean Christian, remains on duty and will face a departmental trial on misconduct charges and could lose vacation days, be placed on probation or possibly dismissed, the paper in reported.

A similar case happened in Houston in 2005.

A patrol officer there arrested a driver for DUI and found nude photos of the woman stored on her phone, downloaded them and later showed them to other law enforcement officers and attorneys at a courthouse, according to the Houston Chronicle.

Houston patrolman Christopher Green was fired, as well as his partner, Officer George Miller, who allegedly called the woman’s house to ask her on a date, the paper reported.

The woman’s Houston attorney, Ned Gill, said the officers never were criminally charged because a decade ago Texas had no laws involving cellphone photos, which were still in their infancy.

Contact Matthias Gafni at 925-952-5026 or mgafni@bayareanewsgroup.com. Follow him at Twitter.com/mgafni.