Sweet Jane

Former San Diego police officer Anthony Arevalos is known to have sexually assaulted at least thirteen women while threatening them with arrest. The City of San Diego has reached financial settlement with twelve of the women. The thirteenth, known as Jane Doe, has not settled at this time. She testified that Arevalos demanded her panties during a drunk-driving stop, then took her into a 7-Eleven bathroom in the Gaslamp district and violated her. Google Jane Doe and Arevalos for all the salacious details.

To date, the city has forked over $2.3 million dollars to the victims of this creep, who happens to be doing eight years in the slam for his egregious conduct. So what does the San Diego CityAttorney Jan Goldsmith do? He has this woman followed. He videotapes her at the gas station. He puts her, her family and her friends under a surveillance dragnet.

"They have private detectives following me around, videotaping myself, my family, my friends, my co-workers," said the woman, only known to the public as Jane Doe.

To make matters worse, it appears that the city is dragging this woman's name through the mud, accusing her of flirtatious and promiscuous behavior, not to mention bribery, in essence making the victim responsible for the reprehensible behavior of Arevalos.  Their surveillance showed that Doe was "kissing and hugging her boyfriend in public; attired in shorts and bending fully over ... on several occasions." Horrors! The traumatized woman should have been strapped to a gurney in a mental ward, how dare she try to lead a normal life after what she went through? The official position appears to be that they know they had a bad egg but this girl had it coming.

Lawyers with the City Attorney's Office even filed legal documents claiming Doe "bribed officer Arevalos with her panties" to get out of a ticket, but eventually the city attorneys filed a strike motion to take back that phrase.

Goldsmith called surveillance in a case like this routine. He said it was not meant to intimidate Doe, and is simply standard legal practice in a civil lawsuit.
"Some people think it's insensitive," Goldsmith said. "I can't address that. That's what practicing law is."
Goldsmith said Doe and her lawyers leaked the surveillance footage to apply public pressure for the city to settle the case for more than was prudent.
"We're responsible for what this dirt bag did, and we have a victim who is a hero. But that doesn't mean we make a bunch of people wealthy, rich over it," Goldsmith said.

The woman's attorney, Browne Greene, even accuses the Police of withholding evidence from his team and shielding the Officer.

Doe's attorney's claims the police department withheld and mishandled those notes to protect Arevalos.
They're also accusing the city attorney of misconduct by hiring a private investigator to follow and secretly film Doe for a month in an effort to attack her credibility."Their person that they had that they knew was a sexual predator, they chose not to surveil. But go ahead and surveil the victim so they can find something maybe to smear her," attorney Browne Greene said.

So the girl won't play ball and we have to paint her as an ungrateful slut. All in a day's work, I suppose. People are calling for the City Attorney to step down. During an interview with Channel 10, the interviewer had a great question for Goldsmith:

"Why would you profess to Jane Doe to do her civic duty and turn state's evidence against Arevalos. But when she files suit against the city, you had her hounded down as if she was the criminal instead. Doesn't that erode the faith the general public has in any way of becoming an witness for law enforcement." 

Great question. Yesterday the judge handling the case refused to grant a gag order requested by the city on the case. City needs to step up.