FREMONT — The case of the final law enforcement officer to be prosecuted in an East Bay police sex scandal involving a woman who was a teenager at the time was resolved this week, after a former Oakland police officer pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor count, officials said Friday.
As part of a plea bargain, Terryl Smith pleaded guilty Thursday in a Fremont courtroom to a misdemeanor count of unlawfully furnishing a law enforcement record or information to an unauthorized person. He is believed to have run the woman’s name and others in a confidential law enforcement data base.
Four similar counts were dismissed.
Smith was given credit for jail time served and was placed on three years court probation, which ends in August 2019, and told to stay away from the woman, who has gone by at least two names.
Under state law, if he stays out of trouble until that time, the conviction can be dismissed.
Smith, who resigned as a police officer in May 2016, was accused of providing unauthorized information to the woman, the daughter of an Oakland police dispatcher, that included when police sweeps of prostitution areas might occur. He had sex with her in exchange for the information.
The scandal involving the woman snared more than 20 current and former law enforcement officers after it became known in May 2016, with the woman’s alleging she had sex with them while she was underage. Officers in Oakland, Richmond and other agencies were named by the woman and criminal charges filed against some of them.
Many of those charged criminally had charges dismissed. Those not criminally charged were disciplined by their departments and some of them were fired.
The city of Oakland settled a lawsuit filed by the woman for almost $1 million. But she dropped lawsuits against the city of Richmond and Contra Costa County.
The woman’s former attorney, Pamela Price, issued a statement Friday responding to the latest court decision, saying “I am saddened not only because our justice system has failed her, but because her story is one of many.”
