A California highway patrolman was charged with two felonies over the weekend for allegedly stealing private images of a female DUI suspect from her phone during her arrest in August.
The 23-year-old California woman who was not named in an ABC 7 report claims 35-year-old Officer Sean Harrington of the California Highway Patrol in Dublin, Calif. sent himself multiple pictures of the woman in a state of undress from her phone to his after she gave the officer her passcode to retrieve a phone number. (RELATED: Cop Game Involved Sharing Nude Pictures Of Drunk Women)
Harrington reportedly deleted any record of transmitting the photos from the iPhone belonging to the woman, who only noticed the photos had been sent after using her iPad, which is synced with the phone. The officer reportedly sent at least one of the photos to fellow patrolman Robert Hazlewood with the message, “Her body is rocking,” according to CNET.
Hazlewood replied, “No fucking nudes?”
Harrington has since been charged for appropriating as many as six photographs from two women, and has resigned from the police department.
“You talk about paying the price for something you once called a game,” Harrington’s attorney Michael Rains told NBC, referencing how the officer described stealing the photos as a “game” to investigators. According to the San Jose Mercury News, Harrington told investigators he’d stolen pictures in a similar fashion “half a dozen times in the last several years.”
“You can’t pay too much of a price for that, and frankly, it’s not over,” Rains said. “The women who were victimized by this deserve to be angry and upset because it’s not a game, it’s a serious matter.”
“She’s tremendously distraught,” the woman’s attorney, Rick Madsen, said last month. “We don’t know at this point, although we’re gratified by the extent of the investigation by the Contra Costa District Attorney’s office, the extent to which they’ve been transmitted, either to other individuals perhaps other law enforcement officers.”
Reports indicate Harrington sent photos to at least two fellow officers including Hazlewood and a patrolman named Dion Simmons, though neither have been charged along with Harrington.
“It would seem intellectually inconsistent that the knowing and voluntary receipt of those same images would not also constitute criminal activity,” Madsen said.
Contra Costa County Deputy District Attorney Barry Grove told Mercury News the officer’s behavior was “unethical, unappealing, and maybe immoral,” but not necessarily illegal, according to CNET.