Ex-Alameda County deputies avoid jail
Sarah Krause, Stephen Sarcos take plea deal for planning feces-throwing attack
OAKLAND >> Two former Alameda County sheriff’s deputies accused of orchestrating a feces- and urinethrowing attack against an inmate, avoided jail time by taking a plea deal Tuesday.
Sarah Krause and Stephen Sarcos each pleaded no contest to one charge of assault under the color of authority. Although both were charged with felonies, only Krause plead to a felony and Sarcos plead to a misdemeanor on Tuesday before Alameda County Superior Court Judge Kevin Murphy.
Krause is expected to be placed on five years of probation and Sarcos faces three years of informal probation; each have just one day credit for time served in jail.
Krause, who will be sentenced formally in February, will have to serve 240 hours of community service and pay $1,800 in fines. She answered, “Yes, your honor” to questions Judge Murphy asked such as if she understood the conditions of her probation, before pleading no contest to the one charge. Murphy said if she successfully completes her probation, she can petition the court to reduce the charge to a misdemeanor.
Sarcos will pay $1,240 in fines and perform 180 hours of community service hours, which can be done in his home in Placer County.
At an October 2018 preliminary hearing, it was revealed that both deputies admitted to detectives during the 2017 investigation that they helped make possible the attack against an inmate who was disrespectful to Krause in September 2016 at the Santa Rita Jail in Dublin.
Krause was having problems with a particular inmate who had called her names and mentally “wore her down,” said her attorney Paul Goyette at the October 2018 hearing. Another “sophisticated” inmate manipulated her to
further his own feud with this inmate, the attorney said.
Krause pushed the button from a control room to open the cell door of an inmate in Housing Unit 1, FPod at Santa Rita. Sarcos then escorted the inmate, who was carrying two cups filled with his own feces and urine, upstairs to the cell of the inmate who had been giving Krause problems, an investigating detective testified.
The second door was opened, and the inmate threw his cups of fecal and urine matter into the cell, then shut the door.
Alameda County Deputy District Attorney Tim Wagstaffe called the incident “foul” and the deputies’ actions “egregious behavior.”
After the allegations came to light, Sarcos quit his job; Krause was fired.
In addition to Sarcos and Krause, two other deputies also were arrested on similar charges. Former deputies Justin Linn and Erik McDermott were originally charged with felony assault under the color of authority, as well as witness intimidation and conspiracy to obstruct justice. McDermott also is alleged to have choked an inmate into unconsciousness.
Similarly, they are also accused of facilitating “gassing,” the term for wastethrowing in the county jail, but in separate alleged attacks than their colleagues Sarcos and Krause.
In April 2019, Judge Morris Jacobson found there was sufficient evidence to keep the charges of assault under the color of authority and witnesses intimation that stem from 2016 allegations at the jail.
Although Jacobson dropped the charge of conspiracy to obstruct justice, he added additional counts of felony assault under the color of authority.
Linn and McDermott are scheduled to next appear in court on May 22.