A federal judge has awarded nearly $3 million to a San Bernardino woman who claimed in a civil lawsuit that a police officer coerced her into a sexual relationship with him after she initially encountered him on a domestic violence call.
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U.S. District Court Judge Kenly Kiya Kato entered the judgment on Aug. 24 following a bench trial in which former San Bernardino police Officer Sonny Aguilera was found liable for negligence, sexual battery, false imprisonment and violating the plaintiff’s civil rights through threats, intimidation or coercion.
According to the judgment, the court initially awarded the plaintiff $2 million on April 29. On Aug. 5, the court amended its findings and awarded the plaintiff more than $949,000 in attorneys’ fees and nearly $31,000 in additional costs. The Aug. 24 judgment incorporated those awards, bringing the total to more than $2,980,000.
The case stems from allegations that surfaced in 2022 against Aguilera, whom the plaintiff accused of using his authority as a police officer to pressure her into a sexual relationship.
The lawsuit originally was filed in San Bernardino Superior Court on Jan. 3, 2024, but then moved to federal court on July 29, 2024, after the plaintiff amended the lawsuit to add federal civil rights claims.
The suit alleges Aguilera responded to the woman’s domestic violence call in August 2022 and took a report. He asked for her telephone number and then “followed her home.”
In the ensuing days, Aguilera began calling and texting the woman from his work phone. Some of the messages were related to the domestic violence investigation, but others were inappropriate and sexual in nature, according to the lawsuit.
In the same month, Aguilera showed up at the woman’s home in his personal vehicle and told her to get inside his car. He was carrying his police-issued gun and showed it to the plaintiff. He confiscated the woman’s phone and then ordered her to perform oral sex on him. Out of fear, she complied, according to the lawsuit.
The woman filed a complaint at the Police Department the following day, and then again a week later. But instead of launching an investigation, according to the lawsuit, the woman was accused by department employees, including a sergeant, of being on drugs and threatened with arrest and criminal prosecution.
A few weeks later, around mid-September 2022, Aguilera drove to an apartment complex where the plaintiff was, where he again demanded she perform oral sex on him, according to the lawsuit. This time, the woman saved a washcloth containing Aguilera’s DNA and subsequently gave it to the police department’s Internal Affairs Division.
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“Defendant city of San Bernardino must have thereafter conducted some sort of investigation,” according to the lawsuit, which included a letter to the plaintiff from Police Chief Darren Goodman and Lt. Albert Ramirez, dated Jan. 19, 2023, informing her that an investigation sustained allegations of unbecoming conduct and neglect of duty against Aguilera.
In 2023, Aguilera and former San Bernardino police Officer Fidel Ocampo-Rodarte were among 20 California officers facing possible decertification by the Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training, which sets training and professional standards for sworn peace officers working in California and oversees their certification and discipline.
At the time, both Aguilera and Ocampo-Rodarte had less than five years on the force.
Aguilera, who was hired as a San Bernardino police officer on Sept. 17, 2019, resigned in November 2022. Ocampo-Rodarte, who was hired in March 2019, resigned in February 2023 after he was charged with felony discharge of a firearm with gross negligence. He was accused of firing his service-weapon several times outside the Dogwood Tavern in Blue Jay, a San Bernardino Mountains community near Lake Arrowhead, in November 2022.
POST revoked Aguilera’s certification on Jan. 9, 2024, after he failed to respond to the organization’s notice of its intent to revoke the certification. Ocampo-Rodarte’s certification was revoked on June 14, 2024, after he was convicted for his offense. Without certifications from POST, the two can no longer work as peace officers in California.
According to POST’s Aguilera responded with his partner to a domestic violence call and arrested the woman’s longtime live-in ex-boyfriend. Aguilera obtained the woman’s phone number, then subsequently called and texted her “numerous times over the next two months.”
POST’s findings said Aguilera engaged in abuse of authority as a peace officer by obtaining the woman’s cellphone number and then pressuring her to meet him when he was off duty.
He also engaged in dishonesty, POST found, when he was asked how many sexual encounters he had with the woman. Additionally, he displayed dishonesty “when he deleted the call and text history from the victim’s cellphone and his own cellphone to conceal evidence of his serious misconduct,” the findings said.
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City officials did not respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.