Embattled cop faces elder abuse charges
A San Francisco police officer charged this week with robbing a bank is also facing criminal charges of elder abuse in San Mateo County, where prosecutors said he systematically stole more than $13,000 over a three-month period from a 76-year-old man with dementia.
Rain Daugherty was charged in July with theft from an elder adult, a felony, and four misdemeanor counts of possessing illegal drugs that police said they found in his home in Burlingame. He pleaded not guilty in August and was freed on $100,000 bail.
On Wednesday, federal prosecutors in San Francisco charged Daugherty with bank robbery, saying he had been identified by surveillance video as the man who entered an East West Bank branch on San Francisco’s Irving Street on Nov. 29, demanded cash from a teller and fled with $9,050. He was arrested Tuesday and jailed pending a detention hearing Friday.
Daugherty, 44, was also one of the officers whose racist, sexist and homophobic text messages to one another were revealed in 2015. ThenPolice Chief Greg Suhr sought to fire Daugherty and eight other officers, but the disciplinary proceedings were put on hold until state courts rejected a claim by a group of officers, led by Daugherty, that the department had missed a legal deadline for taking action. Disciplinary proceedings against the officers have resumed.
In the meantime, Daugherty was on paid leave until July 24, when the Police Department suspended him without pay after the San Mateo County charges were filed.
The bank-robbery charge is punishable by up to 20 years in federal prison. The elder-abuse charge carries a potential four-year sentence, and San Mateo County District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe said Thursday he would seek a prison term plus compensation to the victim.
“Police officers, like prosecutors, like anybody who holds the public trust, are held to a higher standard,” Wagstaffe said. “When somebody breaches this, it’s more egregious.”
Daugherty’s lawyer could not be reached for comment.
Wagstaffe said the 76-year-old man in the elder-abuse case had been cared for by a neighbor until the neighbor became disabled last year and introduced the man to Daugherty, the neighbor’s friend from high school. From September to December 2017, Wagstaffe said, Daugherty took the man to grocery stores and doctor appointments and on other errands, for a small fee, until one of the man’s friends noticed some large withdrawals from the victim’s bank account.
Police found that the 76-year-old had stopped using his ATM card before meeting Daugherty, but during the three months that Daugherty cared for the man, $24,000 was withdrawn from the account, Wagstaffe said. He said officers traced at least 30 separate withdrawals, totaling $13,095, to Daugherty. Officers also found text messages on Daugherty’s cell phone showing he knew the man was suffering from dementia, Wagstaffe said.
He said police obtained a search warrant for Daugherty’s home last December and found cocaine and three other drugs that are illegal to possess without a prescription: oxycodone; lorazepam, which is marketed as Ativan; and diazepam, or Valium.
Wagstaffe said prosecutors held off on filing the charges until a neuropsychologist examined the 76-year-old man and concluded that he would not have been capable of knowingly consenting to the financial transactions.