Court Opinion

ID: 9799212
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 05:57:27.994182+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:13:07.585623
License: Public Domain

PREGERSON, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
During his four years of public service with the San Diego County Sheriffs Department, Deputy Sheriff Stephen Tillot-son received multiple commendations, stellar reports, and a promotion to Field Training Officer. But in June of 1998, Deputy Tillotson made a big mistake: he told his supervisor that he had participated in a monthly firearm qualification exercise — when he had not. The next day, Deputy Tillotson went to his supervisor and told him that, in fact, he missed taking the monthly firearm exercise, and apologized for the error of his ways. But despite his years of commendable public service to the Department as a Deputy Sheriff, Tillotson was sacked for this single lapse of judgment.
In 2000, after fully disclosing his earlier act of untruthfulness, Tillotson was hired by the Sycuan Tribal Police Department. Here again his performance record was exemplary.
In 2006, Officer Tillotson, while employed by the Sycuan Tribal Police, applied for a Special Law Enforcement Commission from the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs. Officer Tillotson, along with the Chief of the Sycuan Tribal Police, met separately with San Diego County Deputy DA Mike Still, Liaison to the Sycuan Tribal Police, to find out whether Officer Tillot-son’s earlier act of dishonesty and termination caused his name to be placed on San Diego County’s Brady index. Deputy DA Still said he “did not feel that [Tillot-son] should be placed on the Brady index, given the circumstances of [his] case.” Of*485ficer Tillotson then received his commission.
Officer Tillotson, always looking for ways to serve his community, applied to work as a Volunteer Reserve Police Officer with the Coronado Police Department in 2008. He again disclosed his prior mistake and termination. The Coronado Police Department contacted the San Diego DA’s Office. It was only then — ten years after the initial incident, after exemplary work, and after being told by Deputy DA Still that he “did not feel that [Tillotson] should be placed on the Brady index, given the circumstances of [his] case” — that Officer Tillotson found himself ensnared in the Brady index.
Now that he is in the Brady index, Tillotson has effectively been blacklisted from police work. The Sycuan Tribal Police let him go. Coronado, Oceanside, and Riverside have turned him down for a job as a police officer.
For fourteen years, Stephen Tillotson was a good police officer, and a valuable member of the departments in which he served. But because of one transgression, he is precluded from doing the job he loves. There should be a way to remove his name from the Brady index and let him get back to work serving our neighborhoods as a good cop.