News/Commentary

California ‘Detective of the Year’ charged with sending sexually explicit messages to children

August 3, 2022 | | Print Article

A California police department’s 2019 “Detective Of The Year” has been arrested and charged with sending sexually explicit text messages to a non-law-enforcement affiliated decoy who he’d thought was 14 years old.

“Gregory Daniel Beaumarchais, 43, has been charged with one misdemeanor of annoying or molesting a victim believed to be under 18. Beaumarchais, who surrendered to authorities Tuesday, has been on administrative leave since being identified as a suspect in the sexting investigation,” the Los Angeles Times reported.

“Beaumarchais, a Santa Ana police officer since 2011, was named the department’s detective of the year in 2019 and helped form its major enforcement team to suppress major crimes a year later.”

The authorities were tipped off about his behavior by an unidentified decoy who’d contacted Orange County Crime Stoppers, “a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that works in partnership with the community, the media and law enforcement to prevent and solve crime and create a safer community.”

The decoy said that a 45-year-old man was sending explicit messages to someone he believed to be 14 years of age.

Working in conjunction with Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), Orange County authorities then tracked the messages to Beaumarchais.

“Hi-tech crimes investigators documented Beaumarchais sending graphic messages to the civilian decoy between December 2021 and January 2022. Even after access to his social media platform was cut off by the provider, Beaumarchais is accused of creating another account under a similar social media handle,” according to the Times.

If convicted, he faces up to a year in jail and of course the requirement that he register as a sex offender.

“Today’s filing of criminal charges for showing sexual interest in children shows no one is above the law when it comes to keeping communities free from predators. HSI is grateful for the collaboration with our federal, state and local law enforcement partners to get these predators out of our communities and into the justice system,” HSI acting special agent in charge Shawn Gibson said in a statement.

“Police officers are entrusted with the sacred responsibility to safeguard society from harm. It is beyond disturbing that a sworn police officer would engage in inappropriate conversations with someone he believed to be a child,” Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer added.

“Our children should not have to worry about being preyed upon by the very people we teach them who are there to protect them. The vast majority of police officers are the trusted authority figures we expect them to be and when an officer engages in criminal behavior it tarnishes the badge of all of our hardworking law enforcement officers.”

Santa Ana Police Department chief David Valentin also released a statement.

“Misconduct, of any type, negatively impacts the commitment to public service demonstrated by the overwhelming majority of our officers. Our Department will not tolerate inappropriate behavior or alleged criminal conduct that infringes on the trust provided by the community we are hired to serve. We will ensure a complete, thorough and objective administrative investigation is conducted immediately following the conclusion of the criminal case,” he said.

Beaumarchais’s arrest comes only days after a former Sacramento police officer, Daniel Joseph Donahue, was sentenced to 90 days in jail, 120 days in a Sheriff’s Work Project, and two years of probation for sending sexually explicit text messages to a woman’s 15-year-old niece on Snapchat.

“You are so sexy. You are so sexy. You’re so hot,” he wrote in one of the texts, as reported by The Sacramento Update.

“Detectives later searched Donahue’s home, workspace, and personal vehicle, discovering that he sent images of his nude, erect penis to the teenager while on duty at work. It was revealed in court that the girl wasn’t the only minor Donahue communicated with, but detectives weren’t able to contact and positively ID the others,” according to the Update.

Beaumarchais’s arrest likewise comes amid the arrest of a retired Baltimore Police Department officer, James S. Weems Jr., who’s been accused of sexually abusing children at a day care.

“Charging documents filed in the criminal case indicate that the Baltimore County Police investigation into Weems began July 3, about three weeks before the agency obtained an arrest warrant for him, when a family contacted police after they found their child watching pornographic videos that they said ‘Mr. James’ showed them. Two other victims were subsequently identified,” according to The Baltimore Sun.

“The allegations of sexual abuse surfaced publicly after Weems’ wife, Shanteari Weems, 50, was arrested for her husband’s shooting at the Mandarin Oriental hotel in Washington, D.C, on July 21. According to charging documents, she accused him of abusing children at her day care, Lil Kidz Kastle.”

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Vivek Saxena
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