Long-coddled Sacramento County Sheriff’s Deputy Donald Black now accused of molesting teen

Donald Black,  a 23-year veteran of the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department, whose service record is most notable for numerous disciplinary actions and civil lawsuits costing the Sacramento County taxpayers  $400,000 to date -- and who has thus far eluded any actual prosecution, thanks to a DA's office who doesn't even care to investigate its own killer cops -- now stands accused of molesting a teen.

Arrested on suspicion of five counts of lewd and lascivious acts with a child 14 or 15 years old, Black now faces what he's never faced under DA Jan Scully's watch: actual prosecution by actual attorneys working with an actual police department.

Yes, even after Black and fellow deputies badly burned two men in police custody, resulting in a "civil lawsuit and an administrative claim that ultimately resulted in Sacramento County paying more than $300,000 in damages," DA Scully's Office, which supposedly investigated the incident, said there were “questions” but "not enough evidence" to criminally prosecute Black or his fellow deputies.

What a surprise.

Scully has yet to issue a comment on whether her office also knew that Black was molesting children.

But Nevada County isn't Sacramento County. Cops aren't given a free pass by DA to maim and kill anyone they like, without fear of investigation -- as we've covered here at length in our Jan Scully and killer cops sections.

Read the full article, below the fold.

Sacramento Police Officer Gary Baker on trial for rape of 75-year-old woman

Brief update on Sacramento Police Officer Gary Baker, accused of assaulting and raping a 75-year-old woman who suffers from a stroke:

In a county that's otherwise brutal in its treatment of anyone so much as accused of sex crimes (see Shane Vicars, sentenced just last week), why is it also no surprise that when a Sacramento Police officer stands accused of rape, suddenly both Judge Cheryl Chun Meegan and the Office of DA Jan Scully appear to be playing for the defense.

The National Aphasia Association has filed a discrimination complaint against a Sacramento judge for ruling that an alleged rape victim with the disorder that inhibits communication isn't competent to testify at trial. Besides naming Superior Court Judge Cheryl Chun Meegan in a complaint filed with the U.S. Justice Department, the association wants the agency's disability rights section to review the Sacramento County District Attorney's Office for not taking up the issue on appeal.

Beloved teacher sentenced to 26 years for what, exactly?

Alleged to have asked two boys to "stick their hands in his pockets in search of a wallet," 29-year-old Shane Vicars, with no criminal history, but surrounded by a crowd of supporters and dozens of letters of support, was sentenced to 26 years for "child molestation."

Deputy District Attorney Shauna Franklin, however, redefined the alleged pocket-search as "substantial sexual conduct" -- and Judge Emily E. Vasquez more than agreed.

According to the Sacramento Bee, "a large crowd" packed a Sacramento courtroom on Friday to support Shane Adair Vicars, who they refused to believe was guilty of allegations from an angry family that Vicars "took little boys in the Sierra Oaks after-school program to secluded spots on campus, gave them candy and had them stick their hands in his pockets in search of a wallet that he said got stuck." Nonetheless, while "defense attorney Shannon Baker sought probation and a county jail term that would have had him released" Judge Vasquez apparently thought her 26-year sentence was lenient (rather than the max term of 32 years), and that she'd settled on her lenient sentence  "because of Vicars' previous standing as a productive citizen and because of his lack of a prior criminal record."

Proof, again, that Sacramento County DAs and Judges are absolutely batshit crazy where child molestation cases are concerned. Note that the man who murdered his mother via 70+ stab wounds, sentenced just last week, will likely be eligible for parole before Vicars.

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2013/09/07/5714540/crowd-supports-ex-teacher-at-his.html#storylink=cpy

Read more at the Bee.

CHP Officer Jeffery Closson charged with sexual battery of diasabled man

A 22-year-old disabled man reported being "inappropriately touched" in mall bathroom on June 20, 2013. After a review of surveillance footage of the area, Sacramento police identified California Highway Patrol Officer Jeffery Closson as their suspect.

Sac County police to children: “Just say ‘yes’ to oral violation

Regardless of whether the individual is an adult or a juvenile, they are capable of giving consent. We don’t require the consent of a parent if we’re doing it with someone of a younger age.
–Deputy Jason Ramos of the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department.

That unfortunate quote comes from the mouth of none other than the spokesperson for the long-suffering Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department.

In conjunction with District Attorney Jan Scully, Sacramento County and City police alike routinely reinterpret the law as necessary. Presently, they see no problem with getting up in the orifices of middle-school kids.

According to Sac County law enforcement, parents also don’t need to be notified that their children are being interviewed as part of a homicide investigation. Parents don’t need to be notified that the police are taking DNA swabs from their children’s orifices, samples that will go exactly nowhere, afterwards, except into a database. It’s all perfectly legal, says law enforcement, even if they say so themselves.

“These are interviews, not interrogations,” Sheriff’s Deputy Jason Ramos told ABCNews.com. “They are all consensual,” chirped Ramos. “Once it’s done, there is a mechanism in place for school administrators to notify parents.” [1]

Yeah, once it’s done, then you notify the parents. That’s how it works.

Even John Myers, a professor at the McGeorge School of Law in Sacramento, told the Sacramento Bee “There is nothing under California law that prohibits DNA collection of consenting minors.” [2]

Nothing, that is, except that children are not legally able to consent.

Leading child-abuse expert: “Kids can consent.”

“I think the answer is,” Myers said, apparently unsure, “kids can consent, and if they consented and it was knowing and intelligent, [law enforcement] can do the search.” [3]

Yes, you heard it here, folks. John E.B. Myers, allegedly one of the country’s most respected experts on child abuse (though expert for the prosecution, most often) “thinks” that middle-school children can consent to what might appear, to lay people, as oral rape.

Sacramento prison psychologist’s friend also charged in rape hoax

From The Sacramento Bee:

    The woman accused of helping her friend fake a home-invasion robbery and a sexual assault has been arrested.

    Nicole Snyder, 33, was booked into the Sacramento County Main Jail on Dec. 12 and released later that day on $5,000 bail. She was arraigned Monday on two counts of felony criminal conspiracy.

    Snyder is accused of assisting Laurie Martinez, a supervising psychologist with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, stage a crime in Martinez’s Norgard Court home in April so Martinez could persuade her husband to move to another neighborhood, authorities allege.

    According to court documents, authorities say Snyder bought boxing gloves and then hit Martinez in the face, and helped Martinez hide some of her belongings in Snyder’s home so it would appear as though Martinez had been robbed.

    Martinez split her own lip, ripped open her shirt, scuffed her knuckles with sandpaper and then urinated on herself to make officers believe she had lost consciousness, according to allegations laid out in the court documents.

   

Sacramento prison psychologist charged with false report of rape

From the Associated Press:

    Authorities allege a woman was so determined to convince her husband of a need to move to a safer neighborhood that she faked being raped. She split her own lip with a pin, scraped her knuckles with sandpaper, had her friend punch her in the face, and even wet her pants to give the appearance she had been knocked unconscious, authorities said Friday.

    Charges filed by the Sacramento County district attorney allege Laurie Ann Martinez, a prison psychologist, conspired with the friend to create the appearance that she was beaten, robbed and raped by a stranger in April in her Sacramento home.

    Police detectives and crime scene investigators spent hundreds of hours on the case, until one of Martinez’s prison co-workers came forward to say Martinez had been talking at work about faking a crime at her home to persuade her husband to move, Sacramento police Sgt. Andrew Pettit said Friday.

    Martinez, her friend and two co-workers eventually told police the whole thing was a setup to convince Martinez’s husband that they needed to move from a blighted, high-crime area three miles north of the state Capitol…..