Matthew Renda | Courthouse News Service

SAN FRANCISCO (CN) – The sexual misconduct scandal rocking the Oakland Police Department has infected other Bay Area law enforcement agencies.

The Contra Costa County Sheriff’s Office announced the resignation of Ricardo Perez, the latest officer implicated in the sexual exploitation of a teenage girl by as many as two dozen law enforcement officers from several agencies.

“We earn the public trust through honesty, transparency and accountability,” Contra Costa Sheriff David Livingston said in a statement.











“We will not tolerate even a single breach of the public trust we work so hard to earn.”

The sheriff said the resignation followed an Internal Affairs investigation into Perez’s involvement with Celeste Guap, the daughter of a police dispatcher who is at the center of the scandal.

Guap, which is an online alias, told media outlets that Perez would pick her up when off duty and take her to a rural location where they had sex.



Guap’s revelations about her relationships with several Oakland Police officers brought down former Police Chief Sean Whent, and led Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf to fire his replacement six days into the job after it was alleged he had had an extramarital affair.

The Oakland Police Department is essentially without a uniformed leader, as Schaaf has put City Manger Sabrina Landreth in charge of the department’s administrative affairs.

The scandal has cast doubt on whether the department has truly made progress on court-supervised reforms enacted more than a decade ago after four OPD officers were found to be routinely brutalizing residents and planting evidence.











While OPD and city officials continue to grapple with the fallout from the affair, other law enforcement agencies appear to be implicated.

In interviews with several media outlets, Guap said she had sex with three officers from the San Francisco Police Department.

The Contra Costa Sheriff’s Office said Perez will be part of the Oakland Police’s criminal investigation. Guap claims she had sex with Perez while she was younger than 18.











As many as three of the Oakland police officers implicated in the case are also alleged to have had sex with Guap when she was underage, in some cases as young as 16.

Published by Courthouse News Service.