This Deputy Sheriff Was Twice Accused Of Sex Assault And Fired. Then He Got His Job Back…The deputy has already put the state on the hook for more than $7 million in damages, a case that revealed shortcomings in the jail’s practices for handling women prisoners.
Deputy Sheriff Freddie Carabbacan always took it upon himself to pat down female detainees being held at the First Circuit Court cellblock in Honolulu.
The other deputies assigned to the cellblock, all men like Carabbacan, weren’t comfortable touching women in that way. And for good reason. State policy expressly prohibits them from doing so.
But searching women was necessary, Carabbacan told state investigators and attorneys, because they might try to sneak in contraband. An incident like that had already happened, where a woman tried to commit suicide in the cellblock with a broken crack pipe left in one of the cells.
“They needed a leader,” Carabbacan said of his cellblock during a deposition in 2019. “And I was the guy to step back into that role and tell them, you know ‘We’re not doing anything illegal. This is what we have to do … somebody’s going to die if we don’t do this.’”
The state Department of Public Safety disagreed.
