OAKLAND — A highly-anticipated jury trial against two ex-Antioch cops is underway and officers once accused of committing crimes alongside them are expected to be star witnesses.
Morteza Amiri and Devon Wenger face charges of conspiracy to violate civil rights and violation of civil rights, alleging that the two plotted with other cops to hurt people for sport while on duty. Jurors heard opening statements from prosecuting and defense attorneys Monday, kicking off a trial that is expected to span several weeks.
In her opening statement, U.S. Attorney Alexandra Shepard told jurors the prosecution’s case is built on text messages and photos shared between the defendants, as well as testimony of police and the alleged victims. AS one example, she showed jurors a text exchange between Amiri and Wenger, in which Amiri, then a K9 officer, wrote, “Let’s f— some people up next work week.”
“Bro, f— to the motherf—ing yes,” Wenger allegedly responded.
“They planned to hurt people, they encouraged each other to hurt people, and then they went out and hurt people that didn’t deserve it,” Shepard said. “They took gruesome photos of what they did and they shared them by text.”
Amiri’s lawyer, Paul Goyette, countered that Amiri and his dog, Purcy, were not on some “wild feeding frenzy,” telling jurors that Purcy only bit someone 4 percent of the time after Amiri took him out of the car. He said Amiri joined the Antioch police department in 2017 because it was a “great place to learn” and described his client as a dedicated public servant who frequently sought extra shifts because he loved his job.
“(Amiri) became a K9 officer and he was really, really, really good at it,” Goyette said. As to the text exchanges, Goyette said it was common for Antioch cops to engage in “highly unprofessional” conversations that were left unchecked by sergeants, who sometimes participated in these group texts. It was ultimately just “exaggerating,” Goyette said.
“It’s a bunch of s— talking,” Goyette said. “But none of that adds up with what was going on.”
Shepard told jurors the defendants also falsified or omitted key details from police reports so the incidents wouldn’t attract scrutiny from supervisors.
In other incidents, the two allegedly texted pictures of intended victims to each other and colleagues, including one incident where Amiri paid a “bounty” to cops for helping him threaten to kill a man he suspected of stealing his mail. In another incident, Wenger texted a picture of someone to Amiri and said, “please find this guys (sic) and f— him in the a–. He’s the fuck that ran.”
“Deal,” Amiri allegedly responded.
In the mail theft incident, Goyette said, his client simply “had a talk” with the man, who now claims Amiri pressed him up against a wall and threatened to kill him.
“None of that happened,” Goyette said.
Amiri and Wenger were among 14 ex-East Contra Costa law enforcement official charged with crimes ranging from violent civil rights abuses to accepting cheap tequila as traffic ticket bribes. The most serious indictment charged the two, along with an-ex SWAT officer named Eric Rombough, with scheming to assault the people of Antioch for sport, with preplanned dog bite attacks and uses of a less-lethal projectile gun.
But Rombough pleaded guilty weeks ago, and now joins another former colleague, Timothy Manly-Williams, on the government’s witness list against Wenger and Amiri. The two will testify about incidents they witnessed, including one that occurred when Manly-Williams — Amiri’s former roommate — was on a ride-along with Amiri before Manly-Williams joined the police department.
In that incident, said Goyette, the man Purcy bit was a “Norteño Hispanic gang member,” who had “a long criminal history, with a capital L,” and who Amiri knew from prior arrests, and who was on probation. He said the man refused to stop his bicycle when Amiri told him to, leading Amiri to conclude, “he’s probably got a gun,” then resisted arrest and was “gaining the upper hand” in a fight with Amiri, who then called for Purcy to be deployed.
“The bite was good,” Goyette said, later adding, “That dog had to be deployed” for Amiri’s safety.
Amiri is already a convicted felon; jurors found him guilty last year of wire fraud and conspiracy in a separate case involving a group of mostly Pittsburg officers who paid an officer’s wife to take online college classes. The participants hoped to earn educational incentive pay offered to Antioch and Pittsburg employees who received college educations, but without having to do the actual schoolwork.
Wenger also faces a separate case, that he distributed steroids to other officers. He maintains that he has been the victim of retaliatory plots after he blew the whistle on another officer’s wrongdoing.
In a separate, administrative investigation, dozens of Antioch cops were investigated — and some disciplined — for text groups that included racist, homophobic, and sexist communications. These included Amiri and Rombough, who frequently used racist slurs to refer to people, and Wenger, who referred to a lieutenant by a homophobic slur, according to reports compiled by a Contra Costa District Attorney inspector.