A $20,000 arrest warrant has been issued for an Oakland man who allegedly impersonated a police officer in Oakland last Sunday, only a few days after he'd been released on bail in a recent case involving similar impersonation offenses in Berkeley and San Leandro.
Sergio Taylor, 20, who has a previous conviction for impersonating an officer, was charged on June 5 with two misdemeanor counts of impersonating a police officer for incidents in San Leandro on June 1 and Berkeley on May 12 but Alameda County Superior Court Judge Armando Cuellar released him on $30,000 bail when he was arraigned later on June 5.
Alameda County prosecutors filed a third misdemeanor impersonating an officer count against Taylor on Tuesday for an offense in Oakland last Sunday.
Oakland police Officer Gregory Palomo saw Taylor attempt to conduct a traffic stop on a citizen's vehicle last Sunday by using a forward-facing blue-and-red flashing light on his 2013 charcoal gray Chevrolet Impala, Officer Ryan Goodfellow wrote in a probable cause statement.
The citizen's vehicle yielded to Taylor's car but when Palomo made a U-turn to try to contact Taylor, the suspect fled onto the freeway and Palomo was unable to catch up to him, Goodfellow said.
Taylor is scheduled to appear in the Wiley Manuel Courthouse in Oakland on Thursday for an attorney-and-plea hearing for the San Leandro and Berkeley case but it's unclear if he will show up in court because court records indicate that he's still at large.
A court date hasn't yet been set for the Oakland case.
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San Leandro police officers who were assigned to patrol their city's annual Cherry Festival arrested him on June 1 after they saw him wearing a K-9 unit police-style uniform with a duty belt, a Glock semi-automatic pistol replica, ammunition, a Taser stun gun and a German Shepherd dog, authorities said.
Authorities said officers recognized Taylor from an alert Berkeley police sent out to regional law enforcement agencies about his involvement in a May 12 incident at Kip's Bar and Grill at 2439 Durant Ave. in their city.
Before San Leandro officers could stop Taylor, he got into a 2013 Ford Taurus with security markings on it similar to police cars and drove away with 39-year-old John Payne, police said.
Officers then stopped the car and took Taylor into custody without incident, police said.
Berkeley police said that in the May 12 offense Taylor was wearing
an imitation police uniform and waved a gun at people during efforts to clear the bar after a large fight.
Berkeley officers discovered that Taylor was prohibited from having a Taser or firearm because he had been convicted and put on 3 years' probation in Alameda County following a December 2017 arrest in San Leandro.
In that case, Taylor impersonated a uniformed federal law enforcement officer while buying a used motorcycle from a man and paid with a fraudulent $10,000 check, according to court records.
