Six women who were sexually assaulted by an on-duty West Sacramento police officer will share in $4.11 million in settlements to their civil lawsuits, it was announced Thursday.
Of that, $2.8 million will be paid by the city of West Sacramento to four of the women, according to attorney Bruce Kilday, whose law firm Angelo, Kilday & Kilduff represented the city in the litigation.
The officer, Sergio Alvarez, is serving a 205-year-to-life sentence at Ironwood State Prison in Blythe, the result of his February 2014 conviction on 18 felony counts of rape, oral copulation by duress and aggravated kidnapping involving five of his victims.
“With the conclusion of the criminal and civil cases, the police department of West Sacramento is relieved that the legal aspects of this horrible event have been resolved,” Kilday said in a written statement. “The victims of Alvarez’s criminal acts can continue with the healing process and the police department can continue regaining the trust of the people of the city they serve.”
Plaintiff’s attorney Robert Buccola, who represented the women in the lawsuit, could not be reached for comment Thursday.
Yolo County prosecutors said Alvarez, now 40, used his position as a graveyard-shift patrol officer to prey upon some of the most vulnerable members of society, detaining his victims — described as prostitutes, drug addicts and alcoholics — and threatening them with arrest and jail time unless they submitted to sex acts in back alleys and other remote locations.
Testifying in his own defense at trial, Alvarez, a married father of three, admitted to having sexual relationships with three of the women, calling them consensual, but denied having any contact with the others. His defense attorney suggested the women conspired with one another in order to benefit from the civil lawsuits.
Alvarez’s conduct was first reported on Sept. 24, 2012, after which he was placed on administrative leave from the department pending investigations by the West Sacramento and Sacramento police departments. Those resulted in a Yolo County grand jury indictment being issued the following February, after which Alvarez was arrested and jailed.
Kilday contends West Sacramento authorities were swift in their probe of Alvarez’s conduct, launching the criminal investigation within 12 hours of receiving the initial victim’s report.
“There was no evidence of prior complaints of this nature against Alvarez,” Kilday said. “There was no basis for any officer or supervisor to suspect that Alvarez was behaving like this before they were notified of the September 2012 incident.”
The individual amounts the six women received in the settlements was not specified.
However, Kilday did note that the settlement money will come from public funds — $500,000 from the city of West Sacramento and the other public entities in Yolo County through their self-insurance agency, and $3.61 million from a larger group of 97 California cities and agencies that provide excess coverage to the local group.
West Sacramento Police Chief Tom McDonald has said his agency underwent an extensive review of its policies and procedures in the wake of Alvarez’s arrest to guard against future incidents of officer misconduct.
— Reach Lauren Keene at lkeene@davisenterprise.net or 530-747-8048. Follow her on Twitter at @laurenkeene