$25M settlement reached with 3 women sexually assaulted by officer

The city of San Mateo has reached a $25 million settlement with three women who were sexually assaulted by a San Mateo police officer, attorneys for the women announced Wednesday.

The officer, Noah White Winchester, was convicted in October 2019 of assaulting a total of five women while on duty. He later was sentenced to 81 years in state prison.

The sexual assaults happened from 2013 to 2015, when Winchester patrolled San Mateo and the Los Rios Community College District in the Sacramento area. During those years, he assaulted three women in San Mateo and two in Sacramento.

The women were able to sue the city thanks to state Assembly Bill 1455, which extended the statute of limitations for victims of sexual abuse by law enforcement officers from two years to 10 years, according to the Emmanuel Law Group, which represented the women.

Winchester spent six years with the Los Rios Police Department before joining the San Mateo Police Department in 2015.

The law group claimed that the San Mateo Police Department did not properly vet Winchester before hiring him. For example, it did not review two police reports identifying him as a suspect in sexual assaults while he was on duty as a Los Rios officer.

“It is astonishing that the hiring team at the San Mateo Police Department issued this predator a badge and a gun, putting the safety and security of the entire community at risk,” the women's attorney, Todd Emmanuel, said in a news release.

“Officer Winchester's shameful, checkered past should have immediately disqualified him from employment with the SMPD,” Emmanuel added. “SMPD's gross negligence has caused a lifetime of trauma for these women, and possibly others.”

A spokesperson for the city of San Mateo did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday night.

In October 2015, a woman told Burlingame police she had been sexually assaulted in her car by a San Mateo officer at the Coyote Point Recreation Area, which led to the uncovering of allegations dating back to 2013.

An attorney with the law group, Pamela Glazner, helped draft AB 1455, which was sponsored by Assemblywoman Buffy Wicks, DOakland, and signed into law in October 2021.

The law group said it has other civil rights cases pending, including one involving another sexual assault by Winchester when he was with the Los Rios Police Department and a jail suicide in Santa Clara County.