A deputy with the Contra Costa County Sheriff's Office resigned Thursday amid allegations that he had sex with Celeste Guap, the teenage sex worker blowing the whistle on misconduct and exploitation in Bay Area police departments.
Deputy Sheriff Ricardo Perez is "no longer employed by the Office of the Sheriff," according to a written statement from the department.
Guap told a San Francisco Chronicle reporter that she had sex with Perez in the deputy vehicle "about 10 times" last summer, when she was 17-years-old, on rural backroads near the Caldecott Tunnel.
Perez is still subject to a criminal investigation at the Oakland Police Department, where the sex scandal originated before involving neighboring cities. A slew of officers have stepped down, have been placed on leave or have been fired following Guap's detailed testimonial, including a police chief in Oakland and investigators with the Alameda County District Attorney's office.
In the scandal's wake, remaining officers have scrambled to try and reassure communities that the departments are still trustworthy.
"We earn the public trust through honesty, transparency and accountability," Contra Costa's sheriff David Livingston said in a prepared statement. "Although this case involved one deputy out of the over 1,000 Sheriff's Office employees, we will not tolerate even a single breach of the public trust we work so hard to earn."
