Ex-LAPD officer charged with sexually assaulting four children while on the force

A former Los Angeles police officer has been charged with sexually assaulting four boys at his Covina home while employed by the LAPD, according to the district attorney’s office.

Paul Razo, 46, was arrested by detectives with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department’s special victims unit Wednesday after he was charged with eight counts of lewd acts upon a child, the district attorney’s office said Monday in a news release.

He is expected to be arraigned Tuesday. He remains in custody with bail set at $2.5 million, sheriff’s records show.

“The allegations of sexual abuse against vulnerable children in this case are deeply disturbing, and it’s particularly troubling that the defendant was a law enforcement officer at the time,” Dist. Atty. George Gascón said in a statement announcing the charges against Razo.

“Childhood sexual abuse causes immeasurable harm,” he added. “Sexual abuse of any kind is a heinous crime and we will not tolerate it in our community.”

Paul Razo

(Los Angeles Police Department)

Razo, who had worked for more than 25 years at the Los Angeles Police Department, is accused of sexually assaulting two of his young male relatives; one was 11 or 12 years old and the other was about 13 when the abuse began, prosecutors said.

The other two victims were sons of a woman Razo had been dating, according to the news release. The boys reportedly spent the night regularly at Razo’s home. One was 9 or 10 when Razo began molesting him, and the other boy was 12, prosecutors said.

The assaults occurred between 2006 and 2017, when Razo was employed by the LAPD, prosecutors said. Razo left the department in April, according to the news release.

Razo was awarded the department’s Medal of Valor for his off-duty rescue of a man trapped in a burning car in Glendora in July 2016. Though the driver was killed on impact, Razo leaned inside the burning car and pulled a surviving male passenger out through the window.

The charges against Razo come on the heels of the arrest of a rookie officer on suspicion of sexually assaulting a child younger than 14 before he was hired by the LAPD. Diego Jose Miranda Lopez, 23, was a probationary officer; he resigned when confronted with the allegations. He has not been charged.

Anyone with information about Razo and other alleged victims is being asked by prosecutors to contact the Sheriff’s Department’s Special Victims Bureau at (877) 710-5273 or at [email protected].