click to enlarge Phoenix Police vehicles. Pryat Wesly / Flickr Another woman has filed a lawsuit alleging that a former Phoenix police officer sexually assaulted her while she was in his department-exhibited vehicle. The lawsuit was filed on June 18 in the Maricopa County Superior Court by Lisa Gutierrez. The lawsuit, which has since been forwarded to the US District Court in Arizona, claims Gutierrez is one of three women sexually assaulted by ex-police officer Sean Pena. Pena and the city of Phoenix are named as defendants. This is the second lawsuit against Pena and the City of Phoenix on charges of sexually abusing multiple victims. Last December, another woman, Krystofer Lee, filed a lawsuit on similar allegations; She told the Phoenix New Times that in June 2019, Pena forced her to give him a handjob in his patrol vehicle and threatened to kill her if she didn’t meet him again. According to the Arizona Republic, the city agreed to settle the $ 425,000 lawsuit last June. Previously, in August 2020, Pena was charged by a grand jury for allegedly attacking three different women, including Lee and Gutierrez. He was released by the Phoenix Police in July 2020. Related Stories I Support Local Community Journalism Support the independent voice of Phoenix and help keep the future of the New Times clear. Mercedes Fortune, a spokesman for the Phoenix Police Department, did not respond to Phoenix New Times’ request for comment. David Dow, an attorney representing Gutierrez, did not respond to a request for comment. John Masterson, an attorney representing Pena on the case, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Dan Wilson, a spokesman for the city of Phoenix, wrote in an email to the New Times that Pena’s actions “do not represent the high level of integrity and professionalism required of all members of the Phoenix Police Department.” Gutierrez, who is described as a black woman in the lawsuit, claims she called the Phoenix Police Department on August 5, 2019 about a vague “incident with a family friend”. Pena responded to the call along with another Phoenix police officer, Antonia Felix. Gutierrez was put in the back seat of Pena’s patrol car and they drove to a suspect’s home for “identification purposes”. When Pena dropped her home, he is reported to have commented that her boyfriend at the time had an arrest warrant that he could take him into custody and that her shirt was “see-through”. At 11:00 p.m. that evening, Gutierrez was walking home from the grocery store when she saw Pena parked in his patrol car in front of her house. Pena told her to come to his car, which she did. He grabbed her hand and placed it on top of his “bared penis,” the lawsuit says. Pena is said to have made statements like “Did you like that?” and “Is that big enough for you?” per complaint. Finally he let Gutierrez go and told her he would call her in an hour. After Gutierrez went home in “panic”, she received a call from Pena while she was at her house with her daughter and ex-boyfriend. He told her to meet him in a field (the complaint does not specify where). Gutiérrez followed. According to Pena’s cell phone records, he called Gutierrez eight times that evening between 10:44 PM and 11:05 PM. “Since the defendant Pena was a police officer, the plaintiff felt obliged to go to the field, fearing for the life and safety of her child, herself and what could happen to her boyfriend at the time,” the file says . “The plaintiff was afraid of the defendant Pena because he had already shown up at her home uninvited and forced sexual contact with the plaintiff. She was afraid that if she did not do it, she would be killed.” Gutierrez found Pena in his patrol car in the open parking lot. There, Pena “forced” her “to masturbate in his patrol vehicle while he bared and stroked her chest.” Pena made “sexually explicit comments” on Gutierrez and “pulled” her face close to his penis, which she believed was trying to “ejaculate into her face”. He eventually ejaculated on Gutierrez ‘”chest and dress” and eventually let her go home. She eventually reported the incident to the Tempe Police, who passed the information on to the Phoenix Police. The lawsuit also accuses Phoenix Police of failing to properly investigate previous sexual assault allegations against Pena. It claims the division received a report in 2018 from a woman who alleged that Pena sexually abused her after he arrested her on a pending arrest warrant, but conducted “nothing more than a cursory and utterly inadequate investigation” into the allegations . This investigation allegedly found that there was “insufficient evidence” to support the report. The complaint goes on to say that the department did not “step up” surveillance on Pena after the incident and that investigations into his “sadistic history of sexual violence” did not begin until 2019. Pena should “commit additional sexual violence” by “allowing a sex offender to continue to patrol the streets of Phoenix alone in a one-man unit with authority, a gun and unsupervised,” the complaint said. In her lawsuit, Gutierrez accuses Pena of violating her constitutional rights under the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment and accuses the City of Phoenix of failing to train, supervise and discipline its officials. She does not ask for damages in an unspecified amount.
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