During his two years with the Scottsdale, Arizona Police Department, former Officer Chong Kim — by his own admission — forcibly strip-searched between 15 and 20 women under threat of arrest, according to an internal affairs report obtained by Scottsdale’s CBS affiliate, KPHO.
Kim resigned from the force in 2008 after he was accused of threatening to arrest and imprison a 19-year-old woman unless she disrobed. A previous complaint filed against Kim a year earlier had been dismissed for “lack of evidence.”
The former police officer admitted that among his victims was a 16-year-old girl who had been involved in a family fight.
That incident in particular — the sexual exploitation, by violence, of a traumatized minor — should attract the interest of an ambitious prosecutor. Maricopa County Prosecutor Andrew Peyton Thomas certainly fits that description, and Thomas has distinguished himself by his zeal to prosecute alleged sex offenders.
Yet, according to KPHO news, Thomas’s office insists that they “don’t have a case against Kim,” nor would they confirm that his name was on the “Brady List” — a roster of officers known to have “credibility issues.”
1:16 am on November 24, 2009
