Predatory deputy sacked for lying about on-duty relationships discovered during rape inquiry
The King County Sheriff’s Office terminated Deputy James Taylor last month for lying about sexual relationships with women he met on duty. Internal investigators were looking into allegations that Taylor forced himself on a vulnerable woman in Ballard when they discovered “inappropriate” text exchanges with six other women, according to records obtained by DivestSPD.
In the previous case, Taylor began a close relationship with a woman who was in crisis and attempting to kill herself with pills when they first met. She said Taylor later took advantage of her while she was so intoxicated that she could not consent. The county prosecutor and the sheriff’s office both stopped short of finding that Taylor had sexually assaulted the woman, but he was suspended for four days on lesser allegations.
Though Taylor maintained that the relationship was strictly platonic, the woman said his body language, texts, and speech sent different signals. She showed investigators texts where he called her by pet names like “sweetie” and “baby.” Taylor had deleted the corresponding text thread on his department-issued phone.
The investigator asked Taylor if he normally used those words in friendly conversations. Taylor said he did, so the detective searched his phone and found text exchanges with six different women. This included Taylor’s long-term girlfriend and other women he was either flirting with or having sex with while on duty.
One of the most noteworthy was Ms. L. Investigators found nudes and texts arranging for her to meet up with Taylor to have sex while he was on the clock. She said it was all consensual up until the point Taylor refused to wear a condom, but she felt pressured to go through with it.
The investigator summarized the sense of coercion Ms. L felt:
“[Ms. L] reported she followed through with that encounter because she felt obligated to do so. She reported this was because Deputy Taylor was a police officer, neighbors were unlikely to hear her protests in the event an altercation occurred, and because he had placed his duty belt (including his gun) on her bed as the sexual encounter took place, which made her uncomfortable.”
The earlier case ran into a wall on the issue of dishonesty. Though there were inconsistencies in Taylor’s story, commanders claimed that there was no “smoking gun.” This time, there was.
Taylor was evasive and played coy about the meaning of words like “pornographic” or “inappropriate. He claimed he didn’t recall Ms. L or recognize her in a photograph. It wasn’t until he was shown texts of him arranging to visit her apartment for sex that it finally dawned on him who she was. To quote the report: “In the span of 18 minutes, Deputy Taylor went from not knowing Ms. L to an admission that he had sex with her.”
This sustained finding of dishonesty was ultimately what got Taylor fired. As incredible as it might seem, Taylor might not have been dismissed for using his beat as a dating service or even for having sex on the job if he had told the truth. The other allegations mostly fall under “conduct unbecoming” and are considered less serious misconduct.
Summarizing, the Office of Law Enforcement Oversight wrote that “community members should have the right to move about their daily lives without a deputy using what is reflective of a predatory practice via the use of a smile, a polite disposition, and a badge to gain trust and accost them for his own personal enjoyment.”
Before you go…
Just a quick reminder that the story you just read is 100 percent original and exclusive. Nothing we print has appeared on another site before we published it. Everything on our Substack is a needle we sifted through hay for hours or days or months or even years to find.
Watchdog reporting is labor-intensive. It’s hard work, and it’s our work. We do it because no one else will. But we can’t do this without your help. If you value this work as much as we do, consider signing up to give a monthly donation through Ko-Fi.