A former Orange County sheriff’s deputy accused of showing an obscene video to a group of teens at Trabuco Hills High School is now facing both a lawsuit from the family of one of the girls and the loss of his license to work as a law enforcement officer.
More than a year after former Deputy Justin Ramirez agreed to a court-ordered diversion program that allowed him to avoid jail time for a misdemeanor charge of distributing or exhibiting pornography to a minor, the state Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training on Thursday, Sept. 12, stripped Ramirez of his license to work as a law enforcement officer in California.
Ramirez was working as a school-resource officer in September 2022 when, prosecutors with the Orange County District Attorney’s Office said, he showed pornographic and violent images on his cellphone to 14-year-old girls.
He resigned from the Sheriff’s Department that December, records show.
The POST commission vote came after Ramirez failed to request a full hearing before an administrative law judge. Along with stripping Ramirez of his license to work as a law enforcement officer in California, the commission’s decertification decision was to be forwarded to a national database of ineligible officers. A POST analysis indicated that Ramirez had applied for other law enforcement jobs.
The commission’s decision came days after a civil lawsuit was filed against Ramirez — along with the county and Sheriff Don Barnes — in Orange County Superior Court by a family of one of the teen girls who alleged that Ramirez’s actions caused her severe emotional distress.
Orange County Sheriff’s Department and county of Orange officials declined to comment on the lawsuit, citing a policy to not discuss pending litigation. Ramirez could not be reached for comment.
According to POST records, Ramirez, while sitting in his marked patrol car in the school parking lot, showed one student a video of a couple having sex, in which a man with a knife entered the room and appeared to stab the couple to death. He also was accused of showing the student a video of two homeless men appearing to smoke a controlled substance in a graphically sexual way, and a photo of a woman whose leg was severely bitten by a dog.
The girl who saw those videos and images told a group of freshman girls what she had seen — including the teen whose family recently filed the lawsuit — and they walked up to Ramirez’s patrol car, POST records and the lawsuit say. The suit says Ramirez showed what appeared to be the same videos and images to the three freshman girls.
Two days later, one of the girls told her mother what had happened. According to the lawsuit, she was “reluctant and exceptionally nervous” to talk to her parents about it, and felt “extreme emotional distress” because she had believed that the police could be trusted.
The girl’s mother called the Orange County Sheriff’s Department and asked how to file a report, according to the lawsuit. The mother “emphatically” told a dispatcher multiple times that she did not want anyone sent to her home, because she “feared that the police would accidentally send the actual perpetrator to her home, and if that were the case, he would know” where they lived.
Despite the mother being assured that officers from a different police agency would be sent to their home, Ramirez and another deputy showed up at the residence, according to the lawsuit.
“One of the deputies later learned to be Ramirez had a grin on his face as (the mother) explained her trepidation,” the lawsuit says. “The entire time (the mother) was talking, Ramirez had a strange grin on his face, acting as if (the mother) was totally exaggerating. (The mother) spent several minutes telling both officers how ‘sick this policeman is,’ all the while not knowing she was actually speaking to Ramirez, the perpetrator, himself.”
Days later, the lawsuit said, a sheriff’s captain went to the family’s home and explained that Ramirez, the deputy accused of showing the images, had been one of the deputies sent to take the report.
“After the captain left (the mother’s) home, (the mother) received a call from Orange County Sheriff Don Barnes,” the lawsuit reads. “Barnes apologized to (the mother), telling (the mother) he is just as angry as she was.”
According to the POST report, the department had unknowingly sent Ramirez to the home. After Ramirez realized the report was about him, he telephoned a sergeant and later turned over his work and personal cellphones, according to the POST report.
Investigators reportedly found crime-scene photos, including pictures of deceased people from cases investigated by the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, on the phones. According to prosecutors, they also found a video of Ramirez exposing his genitals while in uniform at a department office in Villa Park, which had apparently been sent to his wife’s phone.
Prosecutor’s had opposed allowing Ramirez to enter a court-diversion program, citing what they described as “the defendant’s highly inappropriate conduct in this case.” The court-initiated program allowed Ramirez to petition to have the misdemeanor charge dismissed after performing community service or taking a course.
Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer asked POST commissioners to take away Ramirez’s ability to work any longer in law enforcement, for betraying the trust of parents and disrespecting the uniform as well as the privacy of crime victims.
