Police Corruption Trial of Ex-Antioch Officer Goes to Jury Deliberations

The federal trial of a former Antioch police officer wrapped up closing arguments on Wednesday, capping off six days of testimony that, along with hundreds of text messages, prosecutors say prove he conspired to deprive residents of their rights by using excessive force for years.

The case against Morteza Amiri stems from a sweeping corruption scandal implicating members of the Antioch and Pittsburg police departments that shook the Bay Area — and brought questions of police culture and complacency into the limelight — in 2023.

After closing arguments, the jury will now decide whether the evidence is enough to find that Amiri conspired to violate civil rights, used unreasonable force on three specific occasions, and falsified records on one of those occasions.

“You saw proof beyond a reasonable doubt,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Eric Cheng said as he began the prosecution’s closing statement.

He rested much of the case on the testimony of Amiri’s former colleague, Eric Rombough, who pleaded guilty to separate conspiracy charges earlier this year and became a key witness for the prosecution.

Rombough told jurors that as he and Amiri became “the best of friends” on the job, their “proactive” policing style also took a “dark turn,” leading them to encourage each other’s use of excessive force — often aided by Amiri’s police K9, Purcy, and Rombough’s 40-millimeter impact round launcher, which fires a hard foam projectile.

“This turn was in violation of the oaths that they swore as police officers and in violation of the law,” Cheng said.

He said that from February 2019 to March 2022, Rombough, Amiri and former officer Devon Christopher Wenger “encouraged each other to hurt people in the community,” even when it wasn’t necessary.

“You heard Mr. Rombough’s testimony about this agreement,” Cheng continued. “When he was asked, ‘What was your agreement with Mr. Amiri and Mr. Wenger?’ His response was, ‘We were all on the same page that we didn’t feel the correct punishment was being issued, and we could dish out our own.’”

Cheng also highlighted texts sent between former officers, including Amiri, Rombough and Wenger, the latter of whom faced charges in an associated case that ended in a mistrial last week. While Amiri’s defense has written off the vulgar messages as the “rough” way officers speak to each other in a stressful work environment, Rombough testified otherwise.

“They were serious. They were not a joke. They wanted to actually use force and hurt people, even if it wasn’t necessary,” Cheng said, summarizing Rombough’s statements on the stand. “They planned on it, they talked about it, and they even set it up.”

The messages are part of a larger trove that the FBI uncovered in a 2023 investigation into the Antioch and Pittsburg police departments that included racist memes and notes shared among officers and directed at Antioch’s Black and Latino residents.

Some texts that prosecutors have read into the record throughout the trial discuss the incidents involving three men Amiri is accused of having deprived of their rights through excessive force, including Daniel Romo, who testified last week that Purcy bit him in a tent in a homeless encampment that he ran into after being chased by police in 2020.

“I walked out the tent and game planned how to f— him up,” a message from Amiri to Wenger said. “Went back and did justice. Wish you were there. Inside a tent with no cams [body-worn cameras], you would have loved it.”

Amiri said the dog “was hungry for human lol,” to which Wenger responded, “f— yes, f— that nerd.

“That’s what f—ing happens when you run, you acquire a tax. His tax was paid properly.”

Cheng also reviewed similar message exchanges related to the other two people on whom Amiri is accused of using unreasonable force.

“The celebration of injuries and pain show the motivation and purpose behind these uses of force, not legitimate police purposes, but f—ing people up for the sake of inflicting injury,” Cheng said.

After the prosecution rested, the defense spent the afternoon painting a starkly different picture of the hundreds of messages shared between Antioch officers.

Attorney Paul Goyette said that prosecutors were putting “cherry-picked messages” — pulled from many more sent in group chats with entire shift crews and others between two officers spanning 2019 to 2022 — under a microscope.

He said that the way the officers texted was a “coping mechanism” for dealing with seeing “the worst things humans can do to other humans.”

Goyette suggested that the high crime, enormous stress and desensitization officers faced contributed to an “us versus them” mentality among the department.

“Certainly in law enforcement, especially in the city of Antioch, but it’s also in the military,” he said. “It could be firefighters and paramedics, surgeons and ER staff, construction and industrial workers, any stressful, dangerous job. … What you’re going to get is bravado, exaggeration, dark humor, gallows humor.”

Goyette told the jury that the text messages sent were not accurate, factual or an admission of excessive force — they were personal communications sent “in the heat of the moment.”

He also took aim at the witnesses the prosecution leaned on.

“If you decide that a witness has deliberately testified untruthfully about something important, you may choose not to believe anything that witness said,” Goyette told the jurors, targeting the testimony of Adrian Arroyo, who was bitten by Purcy in 2019 — a case that Amiri is accused of falsifying the police report about.

Arroyo, who Goyette said has a “long history of criminal activity … of drug use,” testified that federal investigators had given him puppy urine pads at one point ahead of the trial but that he had not asked for them specifically.

“That’s one of the probably many things he asked for that the government provided to him,” Goyette said. “He lied to you about something like that, which you might look at and go … ‘It really doesn’t matter.’ Yes, it does because it’s a reward. It’s an incentive to come in here and testify.”

Goyette also emphasized the three dog bite victims’ history of drug use. He alleged that Romo’s testimony was riddled with lies and accused the third witness, Mason Zeigler, of “role-playing with FBI this week.”

“That’s called telling the witness what to say,” Goyette said.

Regarding the text messages, Goyette argued that while they were “not politically correct, [and] they certainly can be viewed as unprofessional,” they didn’t violate the law.

“Maybe officers need to be counseled, disciplined, maybe need to be fired … but whether you laugh or are offended by it, [they] are not a crime,” Goyette said.