News arrived late Thursday that Oakland Police Chief Sean Whent was being forced to resign amidst a sex scandal, even though Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf billed the resigned as being for "personal reasons." Now the East Bay Express brings extensive details about the unfolding scandal, which involves a prostitute who sought protection from police in exchange for sex, even though she was only 17 at the time she began taking the cops on as tricks.
The Express spoke to the young woman, who goes by the pseudonym Celeste Guap, and whose mother is a dispatcher with the OPD, and obtained text message exchanges from her phone showing her flirtations with various officers. After interviewing her, the paper determined that "at least fourteen Oakland Police officers, three Richmond Police officers, and four Alameda County Sheriff's deputies had sex with the girl," and three OPD officers allegedly committed statutory rape with her while she was still underage, instead of reporting her as a sexually exploited minor.
Guap says she met and ultimately hooked up with her first Oakland cop, Brendan O'Brien, in February 2015* after she was being chased by her pimp down International Boulevard, and ran to his police cruiser for protection. She was 17 at the time.
"I think cops are fine. They’re cute and all, but it’s like one less officer that’s gonna arrest me," Guap says of her multiple relationships with men on the force.
It appears Guap was essentially passed around amongst the cops, some of whom sought her out online, including one retired Oakland police captain who had sex with her for $250 last December in a Richmond hotel, after she had turned 18. He admitted this to the East Bay Express, saying, "Please don’t publish my name. I will die. I have a heart condition."
Several officers have already resigned amidst the scandal. Per the Chronicle:
On Thursday, Contra Costa County prosecutors said they did not have enough evidence to file criminal charges against one of the two, former Officer Terryl Smith, who had been investigated for allegedly forcibly sodomizing an 18-year-old woman.
Also, "at least four Alameda County Sheriff’s deputies also had sex with Guap. She said she had sex with one deputy in his personal automobile while his K-9 police dog sat in the back seat."
The story gets more tragic, however, because Officer O'Brien committed suicide in September 2015, possibly because his wife found out about his relationship with the underage Guap. And an investigation found that Chief Whent's wife had reached out to Guap directly as early as June 2015, shortly after she met O'Brien, and she openly admitted to having an ongoing sexual relationship with him.
Says Mayor Schaaf, "I’m extremely angry about the alleged misconduct in this department."
Previously: Oakland Police Chief Sean Whent Resigns Amidst Officer Sex Scandal
* This post has been corrected to show that Guap first met Officer O'Brien in February 2015, not June 2015.
