Scott Christopher Montoya–a former Orange County Sheriff's Department (OCSD) deputy who is fighting to regain his job–routinely told women he met while on duty they were “doable” and “fuckable,” described himself to women as a “Stallion,” enjoyed questionable personal contact with a street prostitute, fabricated duty logs about his whereabouts, and bragged to a female teenager that “If you mess around with me, I'm going to fuck you so hard with a big dick enough to make an elephant scream.”
Those sensational accusations–and many more contained in internal OCSD documents obtained exclusively by OC Weekly–help to explain why officials in Sheriff Sandra Hutchens' administration had been so insistent on firing Montoya in October 2010.
According to an internal OCSD investigation, Montoya converted patrol duties into “a means to meet various women” and used his gang-intervention responsibilities at schools “to solicit, while on duty, as many women as possible.”
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Three separate investigations by seasoned deputies, including ones from the department's gifted homicide unit, found numerous women who offered the following descriptions of Montoya: “flirty,” “strange,” “overtly sexual and inappropriate,” “egotistical,” and “a predator.”
One elementary-school employee observed, “Everything [Montoya] said had some type of sexual innuendo . . . always asking about whether the teachers and the mothers of students were single, [and he] frequently made comments such as, 'She's got a nice ass!'”
The principal of a Catholic elementary school in Orange County claimed Montoya had been observed “suspiciously parked near the school's gymnasium before the start of school staring at both parents and children.” That principal didn't want him to return to the school because he was “creepy.” It didn't help that he allegedly compared the size of his genitals to those of a Stallion.
With the help of the Association of Orange County Deputy Sheriffs, the deputies' union, Montoya is suing Sheriff Hutchens. Montoya claims his firing violated California's Police Officer's Bill of Rights, which gives officers extraordinary powers to hamper investigations of their conduct and keeps the public in the dark about findings. While he has not specifically addressed each of the department's allegations, he is hoping a superior-court judge will eventually rule his termination was unfair and that he's entitled to return to duty.
Court records show the case is ongoing.
Meanwhile, OCSD files identify numerous females Montoya met while on duty and dated without the knowledge of the other women.
Department officials became so “concerned” that they began surveillance on the deputy and in February 2009 observed him cruising a Stanton liquor-store parking lot, approaching a female and “immediately [asking] for her phone number.” The woman later admitted she felt “pressured” to befriend Montoya because he wore a police uniform.
In a separate incident a month later, Montoya approached the same woman in his patrol car and, according to captured audio, asked, “Where's my kiss?”
The OCSD investigation files allege that while on duty the deputy visited that woman's office at least four times, though he had no official business at the location and failed to accurately log his whereabouts each time.
In another detailed 2009 incident, an on-duty Montoya inexplicably spent 66 minutes inside a mobile home in the company of a 20-year-old woman and a 16-year-old girl.
That same year, at Walter Elementary, investigators found evidence the deputy asked a school employee, “When are we going to fuck?” and then spent the rest of the conversation discussing “when and where” to have sex.
One day in 2008, Montoya's whereabouts were unknown for nearly three hours, a period he spent with a 13-year-old, female habitual runaway.
A street prostitute named “Ivy” told investigators she had lied to cover up Montoya's indiscretions in the past, admitting the deputy told her she has a “nice ass!” and gave her his cell-phone number in hopes of having “free sex.”
At the conclusion of their investigations, OCSD officials told Montoya, “You are incapable of conducting yourself in a manner consistent with the oath of your sworn profession” and, “Your actions . . . are inexcusable.”
In a termination letter, officials wrote, “Your course of conduct during this investigation renders the department unable to trust your ability to exercise sexual restraint when dealing with both adult and juvenile females.” They also opined that Montoya–a Navy Cross recipient for his heroic acts while serving as a U.S. Marine in Baghdad combat–isn't fit to wear any law-enforcement uniform.
As OCSD investigators closed in on Montoya, he claimed he was temporarily disabled and took an extended leave from duty because of “stress and depression,” according to department records.
In the wake of dozens of scandals under Sheriff Mike Carona, now a federal-prison resident after his corruption conviction, his replacement, Hutchens, has insisted she will not tolerate dirty deputies.
Ironically, Carona–a self-styled “Christian conservative,” even though he was a notorious womanizer–championed Montoya as one of his best deputies.
–R. Scott Moxley / OC Weekly
CNN-featured investigative reporter R. Scott Moxley has won Journalist of the Year honors at the Los Angeles Press Club; been named Distinguished Journalist of the Year by the LA Society of Professional Journalists; obtained one of the last exclusive prison interviews with Charles Manson disciple Susan Atkins; won inclusion in Jeffrey Toobin’s The Best American Crime Reporting for his coverage of a white supremacist’s senseless murder of a beloved Vietnamese refugee; launched multi-year probes that resulted in the FBI arrests and convictions of the top three ranking members of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department; and gained praise from New York Times Magazine writers for his “herculean job” exposing entrenched Southern California law enforcement corruption.
