This OC Deputy Was Hot to Trot

Scott Christopher Montoya—a former Orange County Sheriff's Department (OCSD) deputy who is fighting to regain his job—routinely told women he met on duty if he thought they were “doable” and “fuckable,” described himself as a “stallion,” enjoyed questionable personal contact with a street prostitute, fabricated duty logs about his whereabouts, and bragged to a female teenager he stopped on the street 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 sheriff's department documents obtained by the Weekly, help to explain why officials in Sheriff Sandra Hutchens' administration had been so insistent on firing Montoya in October 2010.

According to an OCSD investigative report, Montoya converted patrol duties into “a means to meet various women” and used his gang-intervention responsibilities with the Gang Reduction and Intervention Partnership (GRIP) program at schools “to solicit, while on duty, as many women as possible.”

Three separate investigations by seasoned deputies, including ones from the department's homicide unit, found numerous women who offered the following descriptions of their encounters with Montoya: “flirty,” “strange,” “overtly sexual and inappropriate,” “egotistical,” and “a predator.”

One elementary-school employee said, “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 said she observed Montoya “suspiciously parked near the school's gymnasium before the start of school, staring at both the parents and children.” That principal didn't want him to return because he was “creepy.” It didn't help that he compared the size of his genitals to those of a stallion.

According to records, months earlier, in late 2008, an OCSD sergeant lectured Montoya for “not answering calls for service.”

In early 2009, two high-ranking officers with the Anaheim Police Department complained Montoya was “unorganized” and “not showing up” for work. A prosecutor assigned to gang activities described him as “unaccountable” and “not doing” his job.

Those complaints caused OCSD officials to compare Montoya's duty log with corresponding video recordings made in his patrol car. The result? Montoya had been “excessively . . . untruthful” about his whereabouts.

Officials told the deputy, “You have countless minutes where you logged yourself to be at a function or a school, when in fact you were conducting personal business, or just simply parked, doing nothing related to patrol functions.”

With the help of the Association of Orange County Deputy Sheriffs, the deputies' union, Montoya is suing Hutchens. Montoya claims his firing violated California's Police Officers Bill of Rights (POBR), which gives cops extraordinary powers to hamper investigations of their conduct and keeps the public in the dark about police misconduct. Montoya is hoping a Superior Court judge will rule that Hutchens violated his POBR rights and he can return to duty.

Court records show the case is ongoing; Charles Goldwassser, the deputy's lawyer, did not respond to requests for an interview for this story.

Meanwhile, OCSD files identify numerous females an on-duty Montoya met and “pursued” without the knowledge of the others. Investigators allege the deputy even promised the same engagement ring to different women, one of whom died during a boating date with him.

“Concerned” department officials began surveillance on their colleague and, in February 2009, observed him cruising a Stanton liquor-store parking lot, approaching a lone female and “immediately [asking] for her phone number.” The woman later admitted she felt pressured to comply because Montoya wore a 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 workplace at least four times even 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 spent 66 minutes at a mobile home in the company of a 20-year-old woman and a 16-year-old girl; at one point, according to investigation records, he told the older female he wanted “to have children with her” and called her “my baby's momma.” Two weeks earlier, he spent “several hours” with those females while on duty.

The same year at Walter Elementary, investigators found evidence that the deputy asked a school employee, “When are you going to fuck me?” and then spent the rest of the conversation discussing “when and where you're going to have sex.”

One day in 2008, Montoya's whereabouts were unknown from 2:48 p.m. to 5:32 p.m., a period he spent with a female, 13-year-old, habitual runaway.

A street prostitute named “Ivy” told investigators she'd lied to cover up Montoya's indiscretions in the past, admitting the deputy told her she had a “nice ass” and gave her his cell-phone number in hopes of having “free sex.”

As OCSD investigators closed in on Montoya, he claimed he was temporarily disabled and took an extended leave from his duties because of “stress and depression,” according to department records.

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—who earned a Navy Cross for heroic acts while serving as a U.S. Marine in Baghdad—isn't fit to wear any law-enforcement uniform.

“You have an extensive history wherein you have involved yourself in questionable on-duty, as well as off-duty, activities,” officials continued. “Most of which are sexual in nature.”

The OCSD referred Montoya's conduct to the district attorney's office for prosecution; the deputy has asserted in legal briefs that the DA won't file charges against him.

In the wake of literally dozens of scandals under onetime Sheriff Mike Carona—now a federal-prison resident after a 2009 corruption conviction for attempting to sabotage a grand jury investigation of OCSD sleaze—his replacement, Hutchens, says she will not tolerate dirty deputies.

Ironically, Carona—a self-styled “Christian conservative,” even though he was a notorious womanizer—championed Montoya as a model deputy.


A version of this story first appeared on the Weekly's Navel Gazing blog.

 

This column appeared in print as “Hot to Trot: OCSD fired Deputy Scott Montoya, a self-described 'stallion,' because he couldn't resist on-duty sexual urges.”

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