According to the Los Angeles Times, a Los Angeles Police Department officer accused of threatening to arrest women if they did not have sex with him was briefly reassigned to Northeast Division.
The Times reports that 12-year-veteran James Nichols was transferred to Northeast Division after a woman alleged that he forced her to perform oral sex on him in the back of an unmarked vehicle.
While with Northeast, the Times reports, Nichols was involved in the arrest of Deutsch Bank Executive Brian Mulligan, which led to an excessive force lawsuit against the city.
Previously
Two veteran Los Angeles Police Department officers were under investigation on Thursday for allegedly forcing women to perform sex acts, according to police.
LAPD internal affairs detectives were investigating charges that Officers Luis Valenzuela, a 15-year veteran, and James Nichols, a 12-year- veteran, preyed on at least four women who had worked for them as informants, or whom they had arrested previously, police sources confirmed.
Chief Charlie Beck said he was "saddened by the allegations. If they are true, it would be horrific,'' Beck told the Los Angeles Times.
Allegations against the officers, who worked together in the Hollywood
Division's narcotics detail date to 2009, according to a search warrant
obtained by the Times.
The warrant claims the existence of sexually explicit messages exchanged
between the officers and one of the victims, and that the officers threatened
the women with jail unless they engaged in sex in the officers' car in secluded
areas.
The pair had been the target of an ongoing police investigation, according to the internal affairs division. But after one of the women filed a lawsuit against the city Wednesday, investigators moved quickly to seize the officers' cell phones and computers.
In her lawsuit, first reported by City News Service, the woman alleges
assault, battery, sexual battery, intentional infliction of emotional distress and civil rights violations against Valenzuela and Nichols for whom she worked as an informant.
When the officers told her she had not given up the names of enough
narcotics suspects, Valenzuela "informed her that if (she) slept with him, he
would give her additional credits on her next arrest,'' the suit claims.
Several weeks later, Valenzuela forced the woman to have sex with him in
the back seat of his vehicle, threatening her with jail, according to the suit.
Three other women have been identified as having been pressured into sex
acts by the officers in exchange for leniency, the Times reported.
It was unclear whether the officers had been re-assigned as the
investigation continued.
