Case of former YPD officer continued
A Yuma County Superior Court judge on Thursday granted a defense request for a continuance in the case of a former Yuma police officer who is accused of having an inappropriate relationship with a 17-year-old girl.
Attorney Jerry Hernandez, who co-represents Bobby Garcia, in asking for what he termed a “lengthy continuance,” explained to the court that he is in the process of writing several motions, which aren’t ready yet.
He further stated that the prosecution would need time to review all of the motions and file its responses, which he felt would take more than 30-days to do.”
When asked by Superior Court Judge Roger Nelson if he concurred, attorney Michael Donovan, who also represents Garcia, said that he did. The prosecution also did not object to the continuance.
Garcia, who is now in custody and appeared at the hearing in person, initially had three cases against him. Those cases, however, have been dismissed and combined into a single case containing 47 total felony charges.
Donovan represented Garcia on the charges contained in the first two cases while Hernandez is defending him on the most recent charges, which were from the third case.
Garcia has been charged with 27 counts of sexual exploitation of a minor, 15 counts of sexual conduct with a minor and one count of tampering with physical evidence.
He has also been charged with four counts of furnishing obscene material to a minor. He remains in custody at the Yuma County jail without bond.
In May 2019, YPD reported that it was investigating a complaint that one of its officers engaged in sexual conduct with a minor between 2017 and 2018. The officer’s identity was not released at the time.
But he was later identified by the Arizona Peace Officer Standards and Training (AZPOST) Board during its Nov. 20, 2019 meeting.
During the AZPOST board meeting Garcia denied any personal or sexual relationship with the girl. However, information extracted from the girl’s phone contradicted statements he had made.
Phone records indicated that Garcia had allegedly been communicating with the teenager and he had even asked her to send him a video of her “twerking” and other pictures. Those same phone records also showed that the teen once had brought the officer beer at his private residence, police said.
At the time of the incident Garcia was assigned as a Neighborhood School Resource Officer (NSRO), but not assigned to a particular school. His duties were to assist schools that did not have an SRO assigned to them.
The former officer’s cell phone was also seized under a warrant but it could not initially be unlocked by either the crime labs of the Department of Public Safety nor the FBI because Garcia refused to provide the PIN for it.
The investigation into Garcia included an extensive forensic analysis of cellphone records and various forms of digital media, and took months to complete.
Garcia was hired by the Yuma Police Department on June 15, 2015.