(The AEGIS Alliance) – ORANGE COUNTY, CALIFORNIA – This officer decided to steal a safe instead of keeping his community safe.
A California sheriff’s deputy broke into the home of a dead man and stole some items. The items included a ceiling fan and a safe that stored weapons, the Orange County Sheriff’s Department said in a press release, the deputy’s own department.
Deputy Steve Hortz was put in handcuffs on Wednesday. A day earlier the dead man’s family shared a video from security cameras of their home that showed Hortz breaking into the residence, then he walked out of the house carrying some items.
A man is clearly seen in the video carrying a couple of ceiling fan parts at one point, and then later he’s seen hauling away a safe.
Hortz was the officer who responded to a call on July 20 about a man in his 70’s who’d died from natural causes, so Hortz was aware that the house was empty.
The first time Hortz went back to the Yorba Linda home located about 30 miles east of Los Angeles was on July 27. Hortz then returned to the house again on August 10, and made yet another trip on August 16, according to the department.
Hortz has been a veteran with the department for 12 years and he is now facing a misdemeanor and three felony charges, KCBS reports. Hortz has been placed on paid leave while he’s locked up inside the county jail. Paid leave is considered to be a paid vacation for officers such as Steve Hortz, but he will have a hard time enjoying the paid time off while he’s behind bars.
Kyle James Lee – The AEGIS Alliance – This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
