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City Pays $575K To Informant Who Says She Was Forced To Have Sex With Cops
A police car in Los Angeles (Photo by ATOMIC Hot Links via the LAist Featured Photos pool on Flickr)
A drug informant for the LAPD has received a $575,000 settlement over a lawsuit she filed claiming two officers forced her to have sex with them.
Tammy Kim had sued the city over her two LAPD handlers, Bill Nichols and Luis Valenzuela, on Jan. 2, 2013 for assault, battery, sexual battery, intentional infliction of emotional distress and civil rights violations, according to City News Service. Her trial was scheduled to start this March, but the City Council voted 14-0 to approve her settlement.
"(Kim) lives in fear for her life as she believes ... that both officers Nichols and Venenzuela verbally informed suspects that (she) assisted them in the arrests," the suit states. "(She) has received several death threats from these suspects and their agents as a direct result of the officers' actions."
Kim is currently serving time in jail (although the reason for her incarceration was not made clear in the lawsuit) and is finishing out her sentence. The lawsuit claims she started working as a drug informant for the LAPD in 2009, naming drug offenders to the officers. She was told by Valenzuela that she would get credits against her jail time for assisting the officers.
However, she claims that Valenzuela wasn't satisfied with the number of names she gave him and that he would give her extra credits with the next arrest he made if she had sex with him. After she agreed to have sex with him, he allegedly took her out of jail in Sept. 2010 to make an arrest. The officer later forced her to have sex with him again in the backseat of his car weeks later.
Kim stopped working with Valenzuela after he got transferred from his position and then worked with Nichols, whom she also had sex with to avoid jail time. However, she claims neither of them gave her credit for helping with the arrests and she's been in jail since April 2011.
The two officers have been put on administrative leave while the department determines whether they should be terminated.
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Related:
Drug Informant Sues LAPD, Says Officers Forced Her to Have Sex
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