Consider This from NPR - On Our Watch: Neglect of Duty

Episode Date: August 15, 2021

In the agricultural town of Salinas, Calif., Police Officer William Yetter repeatedly makes mistakes. First there's a stolen bike he doesn't investigate. Then, his bosses discover he's not filing police reports on time.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, it's Audie Cornish, and we've been bringing you a new series over the past few weeks. It's called On Our Watch, and it's a collaboration between NPR and KQED. This is a show that gives you a look into a process that's often invisible to the public, how police departments do or don't discipline their own. This is Episode 5. It's called Neglect of Duty. Now, if you want to start from the beginning, you can search for On Our Watch in your podcast app. Here's host Suki Lewis. I'm not going to give an excuse. There's no good reason for it. No, no, no. And I'm not trying to jam you up. I'm trying to understand.

It's 2014, and Internal Affairs has taken an interest in this guy. This officer, William Yetter. It's July 14th. I'm interviewing Officer William Yetter. Yetter is a white guy who's been working for the Salinas Police Department for about two years at this point, helping patrol a city of about 150,000 people, many of whom are immigrants from Mexico and Central America. And he's been having trouble turning in his police reports on time. Basically, it's some reports that were either missing late, not turned in, found at a later date. And you got behind as a result of other reports?

This was just one kind of in a series of them? Yes, sir. Okay. And then it never dawned on you that you needed to get it finished? It did. I just, it was kind of, like I said, a snowball effect of you. You're like, I can finish it tomorrow. And then before you know it, it's like, crap, I haven't turned it in for a really long time.

You know, in some ways, it may not appear that serious. This guy just gets behind on his reports and has trouble catching up again. Did it ever dawn on you when all of this stuff's going on, I know it's kind of snowballing, it's hard to catch up, and then you still get your regular work days, that eventually this is going to get found out when someone needs a copy of their report or an officer does a follow-up to an arrest? Did that ever dawn on you that that was going to happen? No, I mean, it was just one of those things where I made sure I got my arrests and the real priority ones in. And then I thought, you know, as long as I get these in, it'll be OK. But these police reports or incident reports are how the police department tracks everything they do.

All the crime reports they take, all the witnesses they talk to, all the evidence they collect. Every arrest that is made, every investigation that happens, they all rely on these reports. I just apologize. I shouldn't have created the problems that I have, and it's not going to happen anymore with the changes to my work habits. But this isn't the first or the last time he gets called in for questioning. Over the course of two and a half years, Officer William Yetter gets disciplined four different times. For missteps during a potential intruder case, for failing to take reports, for not turning in reports. And there was the time his bosses found a bunch of missing police reports at the bottom of his duty bag.

What happened with that one? Kind of the same thing. Just putting them in my bag and going, you know. He'll do it later? Yes, sir. Okay. Each time he messes up, he gets some kind of discipline. You know, a letter from the chief saying,

you've really got to improve. He gets put on probation. He gets a 20-hour suspension, and then he gets a 40-hour suspension. Yetter did not respond to emails requesting comment for this story. His lawyer also said she could not comment. Because I just want you to understand that the most basic function of a police officer is taking a police report. That's about 90 percent of what we do. What the investigator is pointing out is that it's not

just about paperwork. Underneath each of these reports is a real incident, a real person who needs help from the police. This is a story about one of those people who called the Salinas Police Department for help. Her name is De La Luz. Well, now, I don't even know why I called them. I think it was just a waste of my time. We found De La Luz and her family through records we got from the Salinas Police Department. She's undocumented, and there are sensitive details in this story about her and her children,

so we are only using their middle names. Because of the specifics in this story, she knows the police will still know who she is. She told me she's scared to speak publicly and fears retaliation. But De La Luz wanted to tell her story because she felt what happened to her and her daughters was unjust, and she wanted people to know about it. And a note, this episode is explicit. It contains offensive language and descriptions of child sexual abuse. It may not be appropriate for all listeners. I'm Suki Lewis, and this is On Our Watch, an investigative podcast from NPR and KQED.

When you think someone is vulnerable and in danger, you're supposed to call the police. In fact, people who have certain jobs have to report if they suspect someone, especially a child, is being hurt. Police officers often take these reports, and they are mandatory reporters. But what happens if police fail to follow through on those reports? This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things in other currencies. Send, spend, or receive money internationally, and always get the real-time mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees. Download the WISE app today or visit WISE.com. T's and C's apply.

I first met De La Luz outside at a park on a really hot Sunday last August. It's her one day off from work. Monday through Saturday, she picks lettuce in the fields that fan out into Monterey County. And Salinas is often called the salad bowl of the world. We're sitting in the grass under this tree, and De La Luz has three kids with her. They've all dressed up for the interview.

Her 9-year-old daughter and her seven-year-old son play nearby. Her three-year-old granddaughter crawls around on her lap. She's wearing a cute little turquoise dress and, of course, a coronavirus mask that's pink and has Elsa from Frozen on it. Testing. As loud as you can. Sing into the microphone. A song from Frozen. You let it go. There we go. There we go. There we go.

And then we start to have this really, really difficult conversation. De La Luz also has two older daughters, Leticia and Cecilia. Like a lot of moms, she says raising teenagers wasn't always easy. Adolescence is one of the hardest times for a kid. They think they can do everything on their own. But these girls are vulnerable. They never feared that a person would do them harm. They didn't realize that, and while yes, that made me scared for them. The voice you hear translating for De La Luz is Nancy Lopez,

a producer who helped on this story. You'll hear her voice throughout the episode. As a mom, De La Luz also had other challenges. She says her girls were extra vulnerable, and when they were around eight or nine years old, she started noticing they weren't advancing like their friends. And as they got older, they both fell further behind in ways that concerned her. School staff eventually diagnosed them both

with what they called developmental and learning disabilities. They were both placed in special education classes. De La Luz said when Leticia was in eighth grade, she still couldn't really read or write. She knew how to write, but she was just copying, like, let's say, what was written on a blackboard. But she couldn't read or write by herself. De La Luz says she never learned to read or write either. But she pushed the girls to study hard, and she and the girls stepped out, tried to protect the girls and keep a close eye on who they spent time with.

I said to them, don't trust people so much, especially adults, because you don't know what their intentions are When her oldest daughter, Leticia, hit puberty, her mom says she was still behind developmentally and emotionally But she's also got teen hormones And that's when De La Luz says she really starts worrying about her. In late 2015, Leticia has just turned 14 years old, and De La Luz goes through her daughter's Facebook page. Leticia would use voice-to-text to message her friends and stuff. The girl's stepdad helps De La Luz read them. What De La Luz found sent her into a panic. Police records show guys who looked like they were 18 and 20 were messaging her 8th grade daughter. One was asking Leticia to meet him at a hotel after school that day.

De La Luz rushed to the school to try and stop this meeting from happening. The school calls the police, and police reports show that they talked to Leticia and her mom and the school psychologist, who tells the police officer that Leticia is 14, but, quote, she has the mental capacity of approximately an eight-and-a-half or nine-year-old, end quote. So it's at this point that the police clearly take note in their reports that Leticia has a disability. And they do start a criminal investigation. But it never goes anywhere. They're not able to locate the guys from Facebook.

For her part, De La Luz tries getting stricter with Leticia. I don't want any more messages. I took the phone and I threw it in the trash. But two months after this, Leticia doesn't come home from school, and De La Luz calls the police to report her 14-year-old daughter's gone missing. That same night, in late January 2016, Officer William Yetter, who, as you already heard, was on thin ice with his department for not turning in his reports, is out on patrol. It's 11 p.m., and he's going to check on things in Natividad Creek Park. There's a car that's parked there, and you're not supposed to stay in the parking lot overnight.

All right, guys, get out of the trunk. We have the footage from Yedder's body cam. On it, you can see Yedder approaches the back of this SUV, and the windows are almost completely obscured by steam and condensation. He holds up a flashlight to get a better look inside, and you can see that there's someone moving around inside the car. Moments later, a young man opens the car door and leans out of it. He doesn't have a shirt on. He's just wearing some gray plaid shorts. How's it going, guys?

Habla inglés o español, señor? Español. Español? OK. ¿Es su carro? Sí. Sí? OK.

¿Qué es tu ID, licencia o matrícula? No. No? Officer William Yetter asks the guy for his driver's license, registration, and asks about the person in the car with him. His girlfriend? He says, is that your girlfriend? Sí, mi hija. Okay.

Young lady, do you speak English or Spanish? She says Spanish. Yetter tells the guy to get dressed. Okay, put your shirt on. Come on. Your shirt. Put your shirt on. ¿Samita?

Sí. Okay. All right, and shirt. Put your shirt on. Oh, camisa? Si. Okay. All right, and then get out of the truck. The man gets back into the backseat of the car and shuts the door. There's some more fumbling around, and you can see these two people pulling on their clothes behind the condensation of the windows. Then, the car door opens again. Okay, la oficial espanol, couple minutos, all right? Okay, no armas, no dro door opens again. Officer William Yetter calls on the radio and asks for someone to come assist him at this incident,

someone who speaks Spanish. Mi español es muy poquito, bud, so un momento. And then Officer Carlos Rios, who speaks fluent Spanish, shows up to translate. Hi, Chucky. Rios is actually Yedder's superior officer, and on the tape, he sounds kind of annoyed to be called out to assist. He asks if Yedder even tried to get their basic info, what they call horsepower. You cannot get their name in horsepower. Not the way he talks, dude.

Now that Rios is here, Yedder is able to confirm the man's name is Jose and that he's 23 years old. We are only using Jose's first name because the story contains sensitive details about his mental health that could be damaging. We were not able to contact Jose for comment. So this is Jose. Jose and his young lady were in the back of the vehicle when I walked up in the trunk. He's been kind of hard to understand for me the whole time. They were both clothed at

least when I walked up, so that's good. They were both wearing clothes when I walked up, he says, which according to the body cam footage isn isn't true. Then Yedder asks the girl what her birthday is. What's your birthday, young lady? I don't know. You don't know your birthday? And she says she doesn't know. How old are you? He then asks her to spell her name for him, and she misspells it. But Yedder remembers there's a missing persons report out. I wonder if she's the one because there was that missing person that Magana has taken who's overdue from school. Did you go home after school, young lady? And so he calls a third officer, Alejandro Magana, who's the officer who took that missing persons report.

2011A from 2011 board. Go to channel two. And he asks him if it's the same girl. Yep, it's her. It is the missing girl. Go to channel 2. And he asks him if it's the same girl. Yep, it's her. It is the missing girl. It's Leticia. Copy that. I'm out with her over here at the park. Magana comes to pick Leticia up, and now there are three officers at the scene. Officer Rios is a 13-year veteran of the department,

and he came to translate. Officer Magana, who's handling the missing persons case and has worked there for a decade. And there's Yeter, who's got four years on the job. It appears none of the officers realize that the girl has a developmental disability, and none of them treat this, a 23-year-old man in the backseat of a car with a 14-year-old missing girl as a potentially criminal incident. Magana takes the girl home, and Yedder tells Jose to do the same.

As soon as we're done with him, he's just going to take a walk. None of these officers agreed to talk to me for this story. Had these officers investigated further, if they'd taken a report or arrested Jose, it might have changed what happened next. Five days after this, again, Leticia doesn't come home from school, and again, De La Luz calls the police. Leticia's gone all night long. In the morning, police records show the police go to her school, and they're talking to her friends,

who tell the officers that Leticia has been texting them from a man's phone number. That guy is Jose. So the police show up at Jose's house, where he lives with his mom and his little sister. She's in eighth grade with Leticia. The records show police talk to Jose and they say, you know, what's the deal? Like, why was she using your phone? He says, oh, we're just friends. I was just letting her use my phone. That's all there is to it. And because Yetter never filed a report on Jose, those officers who are now talking to him don't

seem to know about that police contact at the park. So they don't doubt what he's saying or really ask him any more questions. Two or three weeks went by and the school called. They said they needed me to come to school because there was an emergency. I said, why? They said your daughter is sick. They said they were going to take her to the hospital. I said, no, don't take her. Tell me what's wrong with her.

Then they said she had fainted. So I left work, and I went to the school. When I got there, the school was surrounded by police. And I asked why, and they asked if I knew she was pregnant. The assistant principal had called 911, and that is what finally sparks a full criminal investigation. The investigative reports in which the police interview Leticia are incredibly hard to read. When a male police officer asks her to describe her sexual assault, she giggles and covers her mouth with her hands. She uses the Spanish word for a little birdie or pajarito to describe Jose's penis. Leticia tells police that she met Jose through his little sister.

They were in the same class together. He asked her to be his girlfriend. First she said no, but then she agreed. She says the first time they had had sex was about a month earlier, that night in the park, when police officers Yetter, Magana, and Rios showed up. Jose was arrested and charged with eight felonies and a misdemeanor, records show. But after a year in jail and two years in a state psychiatric hospital, he was found incompetent to stand trial. The prosecutor told me he had to dismiss the charges. During the course of the criminal investigation, Leticia told officers she'd had contact with the police before, during that incident in the park. So the department launches an internal investigation

to figure out what happened. This is Sergeant Jeff Ramsden, the Internal Affairs Sergeant, Salinas Police Department, and with me is Officer William Yetter. And it's very focused on this guy they've already had a lot of problems with, Officer William Yetter. I believe it was the 20th, yes, the 20th of January of this year, you located a suspicious vehicle at Ndode Creek Park, is that correct? Yes, sir. Okay.

We roll up on this vehicle that was parked at the park at 9 minutes after 11 o'clock on the 20th with all of the windows steamed up. You did not suspect there was sexual activity going on? Well, like I said, when I first came up, I didn't know if the vehicle was occupied. I noted that the vehicle wasn't moving like anyone was engaged in rigorous physical activity. Yetter tells Ramsden he did ask the two if they had had, quote, intercourse, and they both denied it. But we don't hear or see him ask that on the body cam footage. Do you recall telling Officer Rios that they were both fully clothed when you got there?

I believe in the video I say that they were both clothed, sir. Okay. I don't use the word fully. I want to point out, Yetter has reviewed his own body cam footage before this interview. He knows exactly what it shows. Do you think that's accurate? They had clothing on when I contacted them, at least once the door was open, sir. I didn't see their full state in the back of the car.

So you think it's an accurate statement to say to say they were close when you got there? Having viewed the video, perhaps not, sir. Perhaps he's stuck out of my field of view. Not perhaps, yes or no? No, not based on the current video that I've seen, sir. The video shows that Leticia also changed her shirt while Yetter waited outside the car. Internal Affairs Investigator Jeff Ramsden also talks to another officer who was at the park, Alejandro Magana.

Officer Magana, do me a favor and spell your first and last names for the record. First name is Alejandro, A-L-E-J-A-N-D-R-O. Last name is Magana, M-A-G-A-N-A. Great, thank you. He's the officer who took the original missing persons report and the officer who brought Leticia home to her mom. Okay, so you drove up and your assumption was that, okay, he found her sitting at the park with this guy

and that was it? Pretty much, yeah. So you scooped her up and took her back to mom? Yeah, I mean, I do remember asking if there was anything that looked potentially like something that needed to be further looked at. And I think I remember him saying that there wasn't, so. Okay. Magana blames Yetter, but the truth is that Magana was the officer assigned to Leticia's missing persons case. It seems like he could have looked her up in the department's database and seen that there was an earlier report that Leticia had a disability and that she'd been sexually propositioned before.

I asked the Salinas Police Department if Magana had taken this basic policing step. They didn't answer that question. With me is Officer Carlos Rios. Internal Affairs Investigator Ramsden me is Officer Carlos Rios. Internal Affairs Investigator Ramsden also interviews Officer Carlos Rios. He was the officer who translated for Yetter, but he was also the senior officer at the scene. Ramsden had Rios review the footage from Yetter's body camera of what happened before he showed up at the park. Is there any doubt whatsoever in your mind what was occurring in that car when he arrived?

It looked like they were probably having sexual relations. Okay. At this point, the criminal investigation has confirmed this. The little girl has now admitted to her mother that she's been having sex with this guy for about three or four weeks, and this was the first time the police showed up and didn't do anything about it. So we have a mildly retarded 14-year-old that's essentially being raped by a 23-year-old.

So that's the purpose of this investigation. The investigator uses an outdated and problematic term here in talking about Leticia. His questions then come back to Yetter. Would you say that, well, let's be honest, did Officer Yetter lie to you about the condition of their clothing? Did Officer Yetter lie to you about the condition of their clothing? Yes. Why would, and this is total speculation, but why would you think he did it? Maybe he was trying to avoid taking a 07 or a report.

That would be my guess. Rios and the investigator think Yeder didn't investigate because he just didn't want to write a 07 or a police report. Well, let me ask you, how does it, knowing that he is willing to lie to you about a 14-year-old being raped to avoid taking a report,year-old being raped to avoid taking report. How does that make you feel? What is your opinion?

Well, I mean, obviously, he put me in a situation that I don't appreciate. Rios feels like Yetter put him in this position, getting interviewed by Internal Affairs. Because, yeah, being a senior officer and seeing what I see now and thinking about it now is, yeah, something should have been done. But the IA investigator, Ramsden, reassures Rios and tells him it wasn't his responsibility to second-guess Yetter. You are not the focus of this internal affairs investigation. These two officers, Magana and Rios, are not under investigation. You're only a witness, which means that you are not at this time facing any disciplinary action. Do you understand that?

Yes. They're just witnesses. But what the investigation didn't really look into was why didn't either of these officers act, or at least ask some more questions, about a 14-year-old girl in a car at night with a 23-year-old man? How did these officers miss details that were key to understanding Leticia's vulnerability. As mandatory reporters, it's actually a crime for any police officer to ignore the abuse of a child, the rape of a child. The internal investigation found that Officer Yetter lied to fellow officers, that he failed to take a report, and he's fired for poor performance,

failure to investigate a sexual assault, and neglect of duty. No other officers were disciplined, and none of them, including Officer Yetter, were charged with a crime. The internal investigation also did not ask how did the department as a whole fail to protect this girl. I wasn't able to reach internal affairs investigator Jeff Ramsden for comment. Hello? Hi, this is the Salinas Police Department. How are you? But after about a year of emails and phone calls, I did finally get an interview with the leaders of the Salinas Police Department.

Hi, this is Suki Lewis. The chief, two assistant chiefs, a commander, and an internal affairs sergeant named Chris Lane all jumped on a conference call with me. I wanted to ask why Yetter was the only one who got disciplined. You know, there are these two other officers who also witnessed a young girl in a car at night with a 23-year-old man and kind of just let everyone go home. So can you comment as, you know, someone who is an internal affairs sergeant and looks at these things from that point of view, why would they do this and why wasn't that even really brought up as a problem during the internal affairs investigation? That was somebody else's investigation. I was not in the unit at the time. I cannot speak to that. He tells me the department has destroyed all the records related to Yetter's firing and this internal investigation. Like a lot of police departments in California, Salinas destroys

these disciplinary records after five years. So if we'd never asked for these records, no one would ever get to see them. I'm happy to send it to you. It's a public record now. I still would not. Why would I opine on somebody else's investigation? I can't go back and change anything about, if I could, about what occurred. So I don't understand the... Well, I guess to my mind, like kind of the, one of the purposes of internal affairs is to do that review, right? To go back and look at the way incidents were handled and to make sure policies were followed. And then you can recommend training,

you can recommend things to fix potential issues and to catch issues as they pop up. Yeah, I don't see how, I understand what you're saying. And I, you know, in some respects, agree that we're always trying to do better. But to go back to an investigation that has already been completed and asking why certain things weren't done, it's not my duty to do that. The police officer's bill of rights also says all investigations have to be done within a year.

So that means the department probably couldn't go back and reopen the investigation even if it wanted to. They said they couldn't answer any other questions related to this case. Can you talk about a little more generally kind of how common statutory rape cases are that your department deals with? I don't have the exact number, but we deal with it all the time.

I asked for their statistics on statutory rape. They said they'd try to get them for me, but that they aren't easily available, as that category of crime isn't broken out in the data that they regularly report. I couldn't find great national data for this either. But I also talked to people who work and provide services in Salinas and other farmworker communities. They said statutory rape is common, that it happens across cultures and classes. But things like poverty, housing insecurity, family stressors, and difficulty accessing support can put people more at risk.

I'm an immigrant myself, and so I like to see myself as speaking out for my community. Mario Gonzalez is a victim advocate. He also served on the advisory board for his local police department in Fresno. He says in his experience, police commonly mishandle statutory rape cases. I'm not surprised by it, unfortunately. He says police sometimes assume these are relationships that are culturally acceptable in immigrant communities, even when people like De La Luz say they're not. that basically they see it as a common practice and therefore don't really want to get involved. Selena's police chief, Adele Frazee, says this isn't true of her department.

She says that they treat all cases the same. This is our culture too. It's not just the culture of the victims. We are a part of this community, so there is no lens from which we view, oh, well, these people are in this class or these other folks are in another class. That is absolutely not the case. That is not the heart of our cops here. And I can speak to that with quite a bit of passion.

De La Luz says after this incident, things changed between her and her eldest daughter. I didn't really talk to her because it was very painful for me. De La Luz says she and Leticia didn't talk about it a lot. But she did support her through her pregnancy, and then through her childbirth. Leticia had a baby girl. Oh, Dios. Now that baby's three years old.

She crawls over De La Luz's lap and whines for a popsicle in the 100-degree weather. De La Luz is now raising her granddaughter, along with her two other young kids. Leticia moved back to Mexico after she turned 18. You guys have been very patient. Thank you. Sorry. It's hot out. But we're still not done with the interview, because De La Luz's story doesn't end here. Two years later, something very similar happens again. This time, to De La Luz's younger daughter, Cecilia. Cecilia wasn't anything like her older sister, Leticia, her mother says.

Leticia was the rebellious one who'd fight with her and disobey. Cecilia was the one who would stay home, who'd help her mom around the house, and who'd cook for her younger siblings, the two little kids that De La Luz had after she moved to Salinas, who are U.S. citizens. She helped me with everything. And we talked a lot. Records show she was diagnosed with a learning disability when she was nine and was put in special education classes. In photos, Cecilia's got a shy smile, kind of chubby cheeks, brown eyes, and straight, long brown hair. On April 27, 2018, about two and a half years after what happened to her sister, Cecilia, who's just 13, goes missing. De La Luz calls the police.

Around 11, a police officer showed up at the house. And he tells me, ma'am, I've come to search your house. I was like, my house? Yeah, he says, I've come to see if you have Cecilia here. I said, you can look wherever you want, but what you're saying to me is absurd. I said, why would I be calling you if I had her here? De La Luz says her daughter just vanished from the steps outside her house. Then about 24 hours after she goes missing, De La Luz gets a strange phone call.

And I received a call from a private number. And they said, ma'am, are you Cecilia's mother? I said, yes. De La Luz says the person on the phone claimed to be from immigration. They'd picked up Cecilia near the border in Tijuana, and they were sending her to a shelter. But they don't give De La Luz any more details. And I said, is this some kind of joke? Selena's police seem to think it might be some kind of joke or scam. According to the police report, they tell De La Luz not to give the caller any information if they call back. The police do try to contact immigration themselves, but can't get through. They put out a beyond the lookout alert and look for Cecilia in the area. Meanwhile, De La Luz says she starts calling the shelters in Tijuana herself.

She calls one after another. We called like 10 numbers, and they said, no, we don't have anybody. And one after another, they tell her, Cecilia isn't there. I called that last number, and they told me, yes, they had her there. She got there at like nine at night. To understand how 13-year-old Cecilia ended up in a shelter alone in Tijuana, more than 450 miles from her home and her family in Salinas, we have to go back to two months before she went missing, to February 5th, 2018. The records show that police got a call from someone who was worried about Cecilia, an adult who she confided in.

According to a police report, the caller said that the 7th grader had hickeys on her neck, and she told this person that she had a boyfriend, a man in his 30s named Lalo. A few days after this tip came in, an officer showed up at De La Luz's door, asking questions. The officer notes in her report that Cecilia's really scared to talk to her. The girl says she hasn't done anything wrong and she isn't dating anyone. The report shows that De La Luz told the police

she was keeping a close eye on Cecilia and didn't think anything was going on. But she also told them, quote, After taking their statements, the officer looks up this man, Eduardo Serrano, who goes by Lalo, in the police database and comes up empty. She files the report for informational purposes. Police would later confirm his name as Eulalio Serrano Gonzalez and his age as 28. But at this incident, the Salinas Police Department told me they took a 7th grader's word for things. They considered these allegations unfounded. They said no further investigation was done at that time.

And they closed the case. But De La Luz says she does start to worry, and she goes into full protective mom mode. I wanted to trust her, but I couldn't after that. She notices that her younger daughter is skipping school more and acting out. De La Luz thinks something is going on. She says she takes time off work. Every day when Cecilia got out of school at 3.35, I would be there, already waiting for her.

She said, Mom, why are you doing this? And I told her, I love you. I don't want anything bad to happen to you. She says it was a week into this new routine, and De La Luz waits for Cecilia outside her middle school, and she doesn't come out. So De La Luz waits for Cecilia outside her middle school, and she doesn't come out. So De La Luz calls the police. She thinks Cecilia's off somewhere with Lalo Serrano, but she says the police brush her off. It was like basically he was implying that I was accusing someone without proof. That evening, Cecilia does finally come home and tells her mom she was studying at a friend's house, but De La Luz doesn't buy her story anymore. De La Luz goes through Cecilia's Facebook messages, according to the records, and even though she can't really read, there's a word that jumps out at her.

The word is oral. She calls the police again. This time, when an officer comes to the house and interviews 13-year-old Cecilia, she tells him everything. According to the police reports, Cecilia says Lalo Serrano had been paying her to sell bracelets outside the local grocery store. He brought her ice cream at school, and he took her to the Salinas Airport, where he parked his car near the Big Rigs, and had both vaginal and anal sex with her. The police reports seem to show a pattern. This 28-year-old man has spent the past six or seven months grooming and having sex with a 13-year-old girl with a learning disability.

The police ask if they can take Cecilia in for a rape kit to get physical evidence and have her interviewed again by their sexual assault specialists. But De La Luz declines. The police reports say she told police she didn't want Cecilia to have to go through the six to eight hour ordeal. De La Luz tells them she just wants the police to document what happened and make sure Lalo Serrano stays away from Cecilia. We asked De La Luz about this, and she remembers it really differently. She says the police did want to take Cecilia somewhere for examination, but that her own health was so bad at the time that she couldn't go anywhere.

De La Luz has really bad asthma, and she said she could barely get out of bed. The police do take this report, but they don't find Lalo Serrano. They have his name and his Facebook page. They have a phone number for him. They know he sells bracelets outside the Princesa market. But according to their own records, they don't go to the market. They don't subpoena his social media account,

the records don't indicate they called anyone at her school. After this interview with Cecilia, three weeks go by where, according to the police records, nothing much happens to advance the investigation. That's when Cecilia goes missing. That day, as De La Luz says she frantically searched for Cecilia, the 13-year-old was in a blue sedan being driven south by Lalo Serrano, according to police reports. They were stopped trying to cross the border by Tijuana police.

The police let Lalo Serrano go, but they wanted to know why Cecilia, this young girl, was traveling without her parents. They took Cecilia into custody and then handed her over to DIF, which is the Mexican version of Child Protective Services, who put her in a shelter. There, the police reports show staff discovered Cecilia was pregnant. The police don't have any documentation of De La Luz's efforts to call multiple shelters in Mexico, but she did give the police department the phone number for the shelter,

and they take action. They get in contact with with U.S. Marshals, the DA's office, and the Department of Justice. They also assign a detective to the case, and he flies to Tijuana to meet with Cecilia. But because she's not a U.S. citizen, they tell De La Luz that they can't bring her back to the United States. The district attorney in Monterey County finally issued a warrant for Lalo Serrano's arrest on April 29, 2020, two years after he took Cecilia across the border. The prosecutor said he couldn't comment on an ongoing investigation. As far as we know, Lalo Serrano is still in Mexico. Cecilia stayed at the shelter until her aunt, who lives in Mexico, was able to come pick the girl up and take her back to her home in Michoacan. Right after my sister took her home from the shelter, she didn't sleep. She didn't eat for like three or four months.

My mom says she didn't recognize anyone, that everything seemed strange to her, that she talked to her, but it was like she wasn't listening. She says both Cecilia and Leticia are staying in Mexico with their father now, and even getting them on the phone is hard. We tried to contact the girls in Mexico via Facebook,

but it isn't clear they received those messages. them on the phone is hard. We tried to contact the girls in Mexico via Facebook, but it isn't clear they received those messages. The whole situation hurts me a lot. And I feel really bad because of everything. And worse because I feel that nothing was done. For me, nothing was done. Because if something had been done, she wouldn't be over there. De La Luz says she feels like over and over again she was faced with impossible choices, and that she tried her hardest to make the right ones. But the people she turned to for help didn't respond, didn't hear her. And now her girls are far away.

De La Luz says she felt like she had to stay on Salinas to take care of her two younger kids who are still in elementary school and her three-year-old granddaughter. They're all U.S. citizens. There are things that, even though they happened in the past, they still hurt. Even more because my daughters are far, far away. And at the end of the day, I can't even see them. Do you feel like the urgency was there in this case. There's a tremendous sense of urgency to locate her.

Salinas Police Commander James Ahrensdorf tells me statutory rape cases are difficult to investigate, especially when the victim doesn't necessarily see themselves as a victim and doesn't want to cooperate with police. They point out that a detective did go to Mexico to interview Cecilia when she was in Tijuana. I asked them multiple times in different ways if more could have been done before Cecilia was taken out of the country during those prior incidents where police were called. They said again that it's very difficult to make a prosecutable case, and the department was also dealing with understaffing and juggling multiple investigations at a time. Do you guys feel like your officers, you know, missed an opportunity here? Well, hindsight being 20-20, anytime there's a continuing victimization, obviously there's an

opportunity missed, but looking back, do we wish for a different outcome? Absolutely. Can I speak to specific missed opportunities? No, I can't. Would they have made a difference in the outcome that we ended up with? I can't say that either. They tell me the department has added a new position recently, a victim's rights advocate. Did DeLa lose? Did, expect too much of law enforcement in these cases? Her two daughters have these multiple intersecting vulnerabilities that both make them easier to prey on and also more challenging for law enforcement to protect. But the department does have guidelines for this. Mandatory reporting laws require that police officers report any cases of suspected child abuse.

Their policies also require that they investigate all allegations of sexual assault, even if they appear unfounded. While reporting this story, I shared the case files with multiple people who work and live in these communities. Disability rights advocates, farm worker and immigrant groups, and a former federal investigator. They all felt more could have been done. Why didn't they call the FBI? There is such a glaring failure on the part of the investigation. Where is CPS in all this? And why weren't they called out immediately? All the systems that would have functioned and triggered by an act of violence, absent.

Where's the sexual assault counselor? They were groomed and exploited by older men. And we expected this woman to do investigation, reporting, decision-making, triggering into action of mechanisms and machines, pushing the system to work. She was made to push a river. And I think that that was just cruel. The Salinas Police Department maintains they did what they could in the case of Cecilia before she was taken to Mexico. And they wouldn't comment on the case of Leticia or Officer William Yetter. As far as accountability, Yetter, the officer who'd been disciplined over the unfiled reports in his duty bag, the officer who found a shirtless adult in the backseat of a car with a minor and let him walk home, he was fired back in 2016. But as I was reporting this

story, I found out he's actually still a cop. He works for a town nearby. I called up his current chief in Soledad, California to see if he knew about Yetter's record. He told me he wasn't chief when Yetter was hired, and he didn't know about it, and he couldn't comment on something he hadn't seen. I asked him if he'd like me to send him the disciplinary record of one of his officers who was fired for failing to investigate a statutory rape. He said no. Coming up next time, a powerful detective has been passing on police secrets for years. What upsets me is the potential danger of notifying a house full of criminals that the police are on their way. But when his fellow officers reported him, it seems like nothing happened.

You know, his alleged false statements, his suspicions about providing confidential information, it does still feel shocking that there is so much that we just didn't know about. And we feel like we should have. I'm Suki Lewis, and this is On Our Watch. As we mentioned earlier, we want to know what kinds of stories you'd like to hear more of. Please go to npr.org slash podcast survey to complete a short survey. That's npr.org slash podcast survey. All one word.

Thanks. This show was produced by me, Sandhya Dirks, Adelina Lansianese, Cynthia Batubiza, and Nina Sparling. Alex Hall co-reported this story and translated, along with Nancy Lopez of Snap Judgment, whose voice and feedback helped shape this story. Editing by Leela Day and our senior supervising producer, Nicole Beamster-Bohr, with help from Alex Emsley. The records highlighted in this podcast were obtained as part of the California Reporting Project, a collaborative effort of 40 newsrooms created after the passage of Senate Bill 1421 to investigate police misconduct and serious use of force. A huge thank you to the many people who talked to us for this story, including Teresa Anderson and Angel Picon from ARC, Bev Franz of Temple University, Mario Gonzalez from Centro La Familia,

Ariadna Renteria and Douglas Cole of Immigrant Legal Services of the Central Coast, and Veronica Granillo of the Immigrants' Rights Council, and Raul Lara with Natividad Medical Group. Special thanks also to Luis Trejas, Sarah Gonzalez, and Joe Shapiro

for giving us your time and your ears. Liana Simstrom and Emily Hamilton are our project managers. Josh Newell engineered the show. Original music by Ramteen Arablui,

who also composed our theme, Cameron Fraser and Blue Dot Sessions. Thank you to our legal team, including Micah Ratner, Rebecca Hopkins, Thomas Burke, and Sarah Burns. And we could not have made this show without buy-in from the top. Thank you to NPR's Nancy Barnes,

Neil Carruth, Anya Grunman, Bob Little, and Steve Nelson, and KQED's Erica Aguilar, Holly Kernan, Ethan Lindsay, and Vinnie Tong. Thanks for listening. Thank you.