Patterns Of Sexual Abuse Show Gaps In Police Disciplinary System
AILSA CHANG, HOST:
How do police departments police themselves? Like, what happens to officers in cases of on-duty sexual misconduct?
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED POLICE OFFICER #1: Did you ever think that the department could see what you were doing?
FRANK MERANDA: There are a couple of times it did cross my mind, but because it never happened, I didn't think that it would.
CHANG: And how are the victims treated?
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED POLICE OFFICER #2: Ma'am, did you have any alcohol to drink last night - nothing?
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Officer, I don't drink alcohol. I no make drug. I no smoke.
UNIDENTIFIED POLICE OFFICER #2: OK.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: I have four kids. I'm mother of four kids.
UNIDENTIFIED POLICE OFFICER #2: OK.
CHANG: These recordings were all secret until a 2018 police transparency law in California unsealed thousands of internal investigation records - records that KQED reporters Sukey Lewis and Sandhya Dirks have been poring over to try to understand what happens when an officer crosses the line. In the second episode of the new podcast On Our Watch from NPR and KQED, Lewis and Dirks zero in on the stories of two California Highway Patrol officers. And just a word of warning - this story does contain descriptions of sexual misconduct that may not be appropriate for all listeners. Sukey Lewis and Sandhya Dirks, welcome.
SUKEY LEWIS, BYLINE: Hi.
SANDHYA DIRKS, BYLINE: Hi.
LEWIS: Thanks for having us.
CHANG: Thanks for being here. So I want to begin with the tape that we just heard at the top. It's tape that's now public because of this California law that I mentioned. And before we get into what these two officers did, can you talk about how difficult getting this tape still was even with this law in place?
LEWIS: Well, it's been two and a half years since the law went into effect, but we still don't have a complete picture. You know, many agencies have still not provided all the records that we've asked for. Some have just ignored us. Others have misclassified incidents so that they don't have to release them. We've had to file litigation in a number of cases, and that's what happened in this case. The California Highway Patrol was really, really slow turning over these records. So we had to sue the agency to finally get these records that you can hear in this episode.
CHANG: Well, this episode that we're going to talk about focused on how some cops abuse their power while on duty to target women, to pressure them to have sex or otherwise exploit the power dynamic to commit sexual misconduct. And, Sukey, you have been combing through thousands of pages of records for the last couple of years. How common would you say that on-duty sexual misconduct is among police officers in California?
LEWIS: We don't completely know how common it is. And even the records we're now able to see are just this kind of narrow slice of potential sexual misconduct. And that's because we only get to see cases where sexual misconduct was investigated and sustained, which is, like, a guilty finding.
CHANG: Well, in this episode, you and Sandhya each focused on an individual case. Sukey, you follow the story of Morgan McGrew, and, Sandhya, you told Frank Meranda's story. Can each of you just very briefly tell us about these two cases?
LEWIS: Morgan McGrew did these vehicle inspections that people needed in order to get their cars registered in California. And in the course of these inspections, he'd often preposition or harass women who came in.
DIRKS: And Frank Meranda was a front desk officer, the guy who would be at the front desk if you needed to file a collision report or check about points against your license. And he used his job to flirt, to hit on and to pick up women. Sometimes it was consensual, but in one case it was definitely not consensual. And he sent explicit pictures and emails to women that he met in the course of doing his job.
CHANG: I mean, both of these cases show incredible abuse of power, but I imagine there was a range of abuse of power in lots of the cases that you guys studied. Can you talk about why you focused on these two cases in particular?
DIRKS: There were some cases of sexual abuse by police that we found in the records that were much worse - rape, assault. But we didn't want to traumatize the listener, and also, we really wanted to explore how police power impacted even these seemingly more mundane interactions. What happened to these women will be familiar to a lot of us, especially women. Unsolicited nude pics can be a part of being a woman on social media. But what if it's a cop who is sending you those pictures? The immense power police have makes their actions so coercive, and it left these women feeling helpless or even doubting themselves.
CHANG: Let's talk about that immense power because there's this recording you opened the episode with. It's McGrew being questioned during the internal investigation. And an officer is asking why McGrew would ask a woman he pulled over to go to a motel room with him.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED POLICE OFFICER #3: Earlier, you told us the reason you said that was to be intimate. You didn't say anything about it being a joke. And now you're saying it's a joke. Please clarify. Please, please elaborate on that. Clarify for me.
MORGAN MCGREW: I wasn't serious. I don't know why I said it.
UNIDENTIFIED POLICE OFFICER #3: What's your reason for asking that question if it's not to foster a relationship?
MCGREW: Just to see if they'll say yes.
CHANG: Just to see if they'll say yes. Sukey, what do you make of that? Did you get the sense that McGrew was simply just testing the limits of his power? What was going on there?
LEWIS: Yeah. I mean, we can't know, you know, exactly what was going on in his mind. And he did not talk to us for this story. But from what he tells investigators, you know, we got hours of his tape talking to investigators and looking at the patterns in his behavior. It really seems like he was trying to see what he could get away with. And for at least two years, it looks like he did get away with it.
CHANG: And, Sandhya, the case of Frank Meranda is a little different. From his position at the front desk at the police station, he would send e-mails to some of the women who would come in. He would send them nude photos, even allegedly stalked one of them, right?
DIRKS: So there's this two-month period in 2017 where the investigation into him found that he sent over a thousand personal emails to eight different women. Not all of them contained photos, but many of them were really explicit. And the pictures that he did send - he'd be in the CHP bathroom, and he'd take pictures with his police uniform on and his gun visible but his pants down. Even the women who had consensual affairs say it was all a bit much. But one woman, Witness D - she says this was not wanted. When she started getting these messages, she had to do this kind of familiar calculus. You know, how do you rebuff all these advances without angering a police officer who has access to all of your information?
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
WITNESS D: I didn't want to be too aggressive with him. I didn't want to be rude. I didn't want to be directly confrontational in any type of way.
DIRKS: Witness D is also a Black woman. She told me a lot about how she already mistrusted police because of interactions she had had and because of how she was raised. And even though Meranda is also Black, it's not just him. It's the entire way she was treated by his supervisor when Meranda was found out. She feels like she was never seen as the victim, and that really kind of increased the way she felt about police.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
WITNESS D: My children being 4 and 9 years old, you know, we tell them, you get pulled over, you sit down. Be quiet. Don't talk to them. You know, we don't raise them to trust police officers.
CHANG: Did Meranda or McGrew suffer any repercussions?
DIRKS: So both of these officers were fired. But out of over a hundred officers who had engaged in sexual misconduct on duty, we found 15 officers are still working as cops today. And while McGrew and Meranda were fired, they weren't referred for potential criminal charges. More than half of the officers who'd engaged in nonconsensual sexual misconduct weren't looked at for criminal charges. And for those that were, a criminal conviction was incredibly rare.
LEWIS: And it's not just the criminal conviction. What was never examined was how the system surrounding that police officer might have allowed what they did to continue and might have actually created the circumstances for them to harass and stalk - allegedly stalk these women.
CHANG: KQED's Sukey Lewis and Sandhya Dirks. The latest episode of the new podcast On Our Watch is available now. Thank you both so much for joining us today.
LEWIS: Thank you so much.
DIRKS: Thank you.
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