A Pierce County sheriff’s deputy shot photographs of a partially nude woman arrested for drunken driving in late 2008, and uploaded the images to a law enforcement database “for nothing more than the amusement of his colleagues,” according to a lawsuit filed last month.
Officials with the Sheriff’s Department tell a different story. They say the photos were placed in a secure database as potential evidence in a criminal case; the woman was belligerent during the arrest, and tried several times to slip her cuffs.
Three or four people saw the photos before they were “locked down,” according to deputy prosecutor Craig Adams, legal adviser to the Sheriff’s Department.
“It wasn’t something that every cop in Pierce County was looking at,” he said.
The database, known as Gondor, is not accessible to the public, and it requires entry with a password and login information that can be tracked to individual users. It includes crime scene and evidence photos from various incidents. Investigators use it as a reference tool in criminal cases.
“Deputies don’t randomly look through it, and we know when people are looking at it,” said sheriff’s spokesman Ed Troyer.
The deputy, Eugene Allen, received a letter of reprimand after an internal investigation into the incident.
“This was improper,” Adams said.
The lawsuit, filed Feb. 10 in King County, refers to the woman as “D.C.” It does not include a damage amount.
Its allegations stem from the woman’s arrest Nov. 21, 2008. County attorneys have yet to respond to the lawsuit. Adams said he hadn’t seen it.
The complaint states that the woman was arrested and taken to a Washington State Patrol substation near state Route 512. Allen reportedly left the woman handcuffed in the back of a patrol car while he waited for a pair of deputies to take her to jail.
When the deputies arrived, Allen returned to the patrol car and found the woman had tried to shift her handcuffs from back to front. The cuffs had hooked her pants, pulling them down and exposing her.
“Deputy Allen neither covered nor assisted Plaintiff in covering herself,” the complaint states. “Instead, Deputy Allen took advantage of Plaintiff D.C.’s compromising position by photographing her genitals.”
At most, three or four people saw the photos, Adams said. They included officers in Allen’s chain of command and Adams, who ordered the photos locked down. Adams said he learned of the photos in the course of standard procedures.
“(Allen’s) biggest mistake is probably that he didn’t lock them down,” Adams said.
Sean Robinson: 253-597-8486
sean.robinson@thenewstribune.com
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