San Diego Criminal Attorneys Blog
Oceanside Police department is reviewing evidence against former Oceanside Detective Brian Bruce. He may need to hire a criminal defense attorney to protect his rights! Mr. Bruce was accused of several misconduct crimes, including stealing cash and personal property from alleged criminals. The crimes came to light after a 1.5 million lawsuit between Detective Aaron Miller, his partner, and Oceanside Police Department. There are three main incidents that Police Chief Frank McCoy made mention of, and hinted that there could be more.
The first incident is directly involves Detective Aaron Miller, who was Mr. Bruce’s partner before he resigned. Mr. Miller left for a vacation leaving his work car with personal possessions inside to Detective Bruce’s care. Nothing was to be taken from the car but Detective Bruce had permission to use the vehicle. Upon return, Mr. Miller noticed that one of his T-shirts was missing from the car. He accused Detective Bruce of taking his T-shirt but he denied everything.
A few months later in April of 2009 the second allegation against Detective Brian Bruce came to light. Both Mr. Miller and Mr. Bruce were at a crime scene where they arrested a women for suspicion of dealing drugs. She had in her possession $512 dollars according to Mr. Miller who counted the money several times. Later that night Mr. Bruce had reported they had confiscated $412 dollars from the suspect. When Mr. Miller addressed Detective Bruce he stated in his defense that their was a possibility that some money might have been left at the crime scene.
The third accusation happened several days later, which was very similar to the second case. Instead this time, Detective Bruce was accused of stealing the suspects iPod Touch. Mr. Miller had only noticed because Mr. Bruce’s insisted on showing Mr. Miller new music he had download.
Initially, Detective Miller did not report any of these incidents to the Oceanside Police Department because he wasn’t completely sure that Detective Bruce was committing these crimes; however, after he was positive, he reported the wrong doings. For this delay in reporting, Detective Aaron Miller was demoted.
A current lawsuit between Detective Aaron Miller and the Oceanside Police Department is what brought around the investigation and accusation of crimes committed by Detective Brian Bruce.
It appears the San Diego Police Department is not the only Police Department having issues with their training and supervision of their officers and detectives!
This article can be found:
North County Times
Author of Article: Brandon Lowrey