‘They Planned to Hurt People’: Ex-Antioch Officers’ Corruption Trial Begins

As a major police corruption trial against two former Antioch officers kicked off Monday, federal prosecutors laid out what they alleged were agreements among a group of officers to maim, maul and severely injure suspects.

Morteza Amiri and Devon Christopher Wenger are charged with taking part in a three-year conspiracy to violate civil rights, often using unlawful and excessive force in the process. They face several additional charges alleging specific constitutional violations involving unreasonable use of a police K9 and a 40-millimeter impact round launcher.

“They planned to hurt people, they encouraged each other to hurt people, then they went out to hurt people who didn’t deserve it,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Alexandra Shepard told the jury assembled in federal court in Oakland. “The acts in this trial were criminal, unreasonable, unjustified and unlawful. And as you will see, they were planned.”

A third officer, Eric Rombough, took a plea deal a little over a month ago, and he’s now expected to be a key witness for the prosecution. Shepard mentioned Rombough’s hobby of collecting spent impact round shells he’d fired at people on his fireplace mantel.

“They planned to use force even when it wasn’t necessary,” Shepard told the jury, adding that the officers celebrated it by exchanging photographs of the damage they caused.

She read out loud directly from texts the officers exchanged, according to evidence prosecutors intend to introduce.

“Gory pics are for personal stuff,” she read from one of Amiri’s texts, referencing gruesome injuries inflicted by his K9. “Cleaned up for the case.”

Describing the dog attack of Daniel Romo in 2020, Amiri texted: “Bro, we saw him laying in bed just acting like he was asleep. I walked out of the tent and game planned how to f— him up,” Shepard read to the jury. “Went back and did justice.” The prosecution displayed a photo of about two dozen shred-like lacerations under Romo’s shoulder blade.

In addition to the federal corruption case built on officers’ text messages, Amiri, Wenger and Rombough were among at least 14 Antioch officers and supervisors found to have swapped racist texts, according to a report by the Contra Costa District Attorney’s Office that was released independent of the FBI investigation.

In the first defense opening statement, Amiri’s attorney, Paul Goyette, described a somewhat casual culture in the Antioch Police Department, where officers were encouraged to communicate with each other in group text messages on their personal phones.

“These texts are … a bunch of trash-talking that doesn’t connect up in any shape or form with arrests made,” Goyette said.

Goyette defended Amiri’s use of his K9, Purcy, noting that well over 90% of the time Purcy was deployed, no one was bitten. “The prosecution wants you to believe that Morteza Amiri and Purcy were on a feeding frenzy, feeding on the people of Antioch,” Goyette said.

He also told the jury no complaint was filed over the use of the K9 against Romo, which he said Amiri used as a safer alternative for officers after Romo fled and hid in a homeless encampment.

Wenger’s attorney, Nicole Castronovo, told the jury that prosecutors had “cherry-picked” officers’ text messages.

Amiri, Wenger and Rombough were not there for each other’s uses of force highlighted in the case, she said. “Yet the government put them all together as if they planned these things and planned these events, based off texts with no context.”

The trial, expected to last about three weeks, is related to several other federal prosecutions spawned from the same sprawling investigation into the Antioch Police Department.

Another former Antioch officer, Timothy Allen Manly Williams, is charged with communicating with the target of a wiretap investigation and unlawfully seizing and destroying a witness’ cellphone. He is also listed as a witness prosecutors expect to call in their case against Amiri and Wenger.

A federal jury convicted Amiri last year of wire fraud and conspiracy for a scheme in which officers obtained fraudulent college degrees to get a bump in their pay.

Wenger faces charges of illegally distributing anabolic steroids in another case currently set to go to trial in April.