Wants job back....

Ex-deputy caught in prostitution sting wants job back

By Henry K. Lee

A former Alameda County sheriff’s deputy is fighting to get his job back after he was fired for soliciting a prostitute during a San Ramon police sting, court records show.

In October 2013, Austin Mederos, a 31-year-old Livermore resident, allegedly set up a meeting with a prostitute after responding to an ad on MyRedbook.com, a now-shuttered Bay Area website that investigators say was an online marketplace for prostitution. Mederos was off duty at the time.

Mederos, a seven-year veteran, agreed to pay the woman $60 for sex at an Extended Stay America hotel, authorities said. He greeted her with a hug, placed the money on the dresser and was then surprised by San Ramon officers who came out of hiding and put him in handcuffs, officials said. The prostitute was cooperating in the sting.

But a San Ramon police sergeant learned that Mederos was a deputy and released him, citing a penal code section that allows for the release of a suspect if there are insufficient grounds for an arrest. Authorities said Mederos admitted that he had made “probably the biggest mistake of (his) life” and did not try to use his position as a deputy to avoid responsibility.

Alameda County Sheriff Greg Ahern terminated Mederos last year on the grounds that his actions were “immoral and illegal” and reflected poorly on himself and the sheriff’s office.

“As a peace officer, you are all the time held to the highest standards of behavior,” Ahern wrote in a letter to the deputy. “Yet, you ended up violating the same laws you are expected to uphold.”

Mederos appealed to the Alameda County Civil Service Commission, which upheld the termination on April 1 after an administrative law judge reviewed the case and sided with the sheriff.

On Friday, Mederos filed a petition in Superior Court asking a judge to set aside the commission’s ruling. He said the commission had “abused its discretion by imposing and sustaining such a severe and unconscionable punishment based upon petitioner’s conduct.”

Mederos said he needed “human interaction” after his longtime girlfriend had broken up with him, records show. He said his act of solicitation stemmed in part from his diagnosis of anxiety, which he said resulted from working at Santa Rita Jail in Dublin.

Mederos told investigators he believed his conduct was consensual and discreet because it would have been in a hotel room, and he noted that such an act would not have been illegal elsewhere, like in parts of Nevada, records show. According to investigators, Mederos “has engaged in legal solicitation for prostitution in Nevada.”

“He describes his attempt to pay money for consensual sex as not the type of 'base, vile and depraved’ conduct that 'shocks the public conscience,’” Administrative Law Judge Regina Brown wrote in her summary of the San Ramon case.

But Brown concluded that Mederos’ stance “suggests that he is negating that his conduct amounted to criminal behavior, and it appears that he is not accepting responsibility for his illegal behavior. Given his beliefs, it is highly likely that this type of behavior would have continued if he had not been caught in a prostitution sting operation.”