Rohnert Park police officer plea bargain in lewd texts case

A former Rohnert Park police officer accused of sending lewd text messages to two teenage girls, both members of the city’s police explorer program, has entered a plea bargain with prosecutors to serve six months in jail.

Garrett James Piland, 33, pleaded no contest to attempting to have sex with a minor and sending harmful material to an underage person.

Other charges including sexual battery and annoying or molesting a victim under 18 are expected to be dropped at his June 28 sentencing.

Piland, who worked for the department for nearly four years before leaving March 9, declined on Tuesday to comment.

The allegations surfaced this fall when one of the explorers, a 17-year-old Rancho Cotate High School student, reported she had been receiving texts from Piland since meeting him at a Christmas toy drive in 2015.

It began after Piland added her as a friend on Facebook and exchanged phone numbers with her, according to search warrant documents containing the girl’s statement to Sonoma County sheriff’s detectives.

At first, she said Piland complimented her on her leggings but soon confided that his wife was fighting with him and refused to have sex with him, the documents said.

“When the victim asked why, he said (his) wife thinks he is cheating on her and always thinks he is talking to other girls,” Detective Scott Singleton wrote.

The girl said the texting continued throughout the year, heating up at the end of summer when she returned to the explorers, a program for 15 to 21-year-olds considering careers as police officers or firefighters. Piland, who was not involved with the program, urged her to meet him for sex in the darkened parking lot of the fire station where he worked or in a locked room inside the building, the documents said.

He asked her if she had a rape fantasy and offered to tie her up or handcuff her, the documents said.

Despite continued text messages, the girl said she never talked to Piland on the phone and never met him in person.

Finally, in October, she complained to another Rohnert Park officer when Piland wrote that his wife had moved out and “the coast was clear.”

Sheriff’s detectives took over the investigation at Rohnert Park’s request.

The girl said she deleted Piland’s texts to her, but a search of his phone turned up a number of messages with strong sexual content that corroborate her statement, Singleton wrote.

“I just wanna get naughty with u,” one text said. “I’ll even video myself pleasing myself. I’d be hella nervous to send that tho.”

You can reach Staff Writer Paul Payne at 707-568-5312 or paul.payne@pressdemocrat.com. ?On Twitter @ppayne.