A Texas cop who we reported about after he was arrested for sexually assaulting a 13-year-old at least 20 times between September and December in 2016, telling her he “loved” her and “wanted to marry her” now has another warrant for his arrest after making contact with the victim again.
Former Elmendorf cop Jesus Gonzalez has been out on a $75.000 bond since he was released after his December arrest for continuous sexual abuse of a child.
Now, it appears Gonzalez was one of many offenders who was being investigated by a San Antonio Police Department Special Victims Unit Detective who may face arrest after “mishandling” over 130 cases of sexual assault, many which he apparently failed to investigate at all.
Some of those cases have passed the statute of limitations requirement and can no longer be criminally prosecuted.
The discoveries were made after PINAC received an email from an anonymous source who read our initial story stating former Elmendorf cop Jesus Gonzalez, 42, was captured on a gas station camera buying the victim a rose from the station and throwing it in the back of his truck.
According to the source, the victim’s family found Gonzalez in his truck just one street over from their residence after their daughter returned home with a rose and cell phone, which they had not given her.
PINAC reached out to the San Antonio Police Department to verify the warrant for Gonzalez on October 25, but was stonewalled after San Antonio public information officer Romana Lopez stated we were required to provide Gonzalez’s date of birth, apparently unwilling to readily confirm the warrant.
We then reached out to civil rights attorney Robert Ranco to share ideas about how we could obtain confirmation on the warrant.
A few hours later, Ranco messaged back with story published by MySA on October 26, which revealed the detective had been removed from his duties as detective after improperly investigating cases dating back to 2013.
Ranco came across the MySA story after he received a call shortly after our conversation from another sexual assault victim who may have been impacted by the detective’s inaction.
According to Ranco, that victim’s case has now been assigned to a new detective.
A press conference was held by San Antonio Police Chief William McManus and City Manager Sheryl Sculley during the afternoon–the same day the story was published–during which they announced a “recent, self-initiated” internal audit of cases assigned to the Special Victims Unit that revealed the depth of the mishandled cases.
“My humble apologies go out to the victims whose crimes were not properly investigated,” McManus said during the presser.
“We own that. We’ll fix it.”
According to McManus, the department began the audit about seven weeks ago after noticing discrepancies between the number of cases charged versus the number of cases filed.
The chief didn’t identify the detective responsible for dropping the ball on the cases, although he said they were “mishandled in a number of ways.”
In a follow up conversation, Ranco called the debacle “horrific.”
“I think all these people have civil rights claims. ”
“If he failed to do his job and investigate these cases, he violated the rights of these victims.”
“I can’t even imagine the additional trauma he may have inflicted on those victims,” Ranco added. “If he delayed or refused to investigate these cases properly, he would have victimized the people all over again.”
It took a call from our anonymous source several weeks after Gonzalez was found near the victim’s residence to the mayor to get a response from the San Antonio police department. According to the source, an SAPD Lieutenant called her to confirm a warrant had been issued shortly after she made contact.
We were able to confirm a warrant for Jesus Gonzalez whose date of birth is December 24, 1974 on bexar.org for consistent sexual abuse of a child.
It shows Gonzalez’s bail at $75,000, although our source tells us the bail is actually $250,000 and that the system updates on the first Friday of every month.
According to our source, Gonzalez has not yet been arrested.
