A San Bernardino woman has been awarded nearly $3 million after a federal judge found former officer Sonny Aguilera liable for sexual battery against her, stemming from a 2022 domestic violence call gone horribly wrong. The officer, Sonny Aguilera, responded to the woman's call in August 2022, then allegedly used his badge and his gun to coerce her into a sexual relationship in the weeks that followed.
According to the Orange County Register, Aguilera asked for the woman's phone number after responding to her call, then called and texted her from his work phone. In the ensuing days, he showed up at her home in his personal vehicle and demanded she perform oral sex on him; in a later incident, he demanded she perform oral sex on him at an apartment complex in San Bernardino County while displaying his police-issued firearm. The woman complied out of fear, the paper reports, and she later saved a washcloth containing Aguilera's DNA and turned it over to the police department's internal affairs division as evidence.
Court filings reviewed by the newspaper show the woman tried to report the misconduct almost immediately. She filed a complaint at the police department the month it happened, then filed another complaint a week later. But per federal court docket minutes cited in case records, when she first went to the station, an internal police sergeant dismissed her report and warned she could be arrested for making false reports days before internal affairs eventually acted. The Register also reports that department employees accused her of being on drugs and threatened her with arrest and criminal prosecution.
Internal Investigation Sustained the Allegations
Aguilera resigned from the San Bernardino Police Department in November 2022 as the internal investigation into unbecoming conduct and neglect of duty moved forward. On January 19, 2023, Police Chief Darren Goodman and Lt. Albert Ramirez sent the plaintiff a letter informing her that the department's investigation had sustained her allegations, according to the Register's reporting.
The paper also reports that Aguilera deleted call and text histories from both the victim's cellphone and his own in an apparent effort to conceal evidence, and that his messages to her included inappropriate and sexual content. He was hired as a San Bernardino police officer in September 2019.
State Regulators Permanently Barred Him From Policing
California's Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training, which oversees peace officer certification and discipline statewide, permanently revoked Aguilera's certification on January 9, 2024. According to findings detailed in a POST Statement of Findings, the revocation was based on statutory grounds of abuse of power and dishonesty, with POST specifically finding that Aguilera abused his authority by obtaining the woman's cellphone number and pressuring her to meet him off duty, and that he was dishonest when asked about the number of sexual encounters. Aguilera can no longer work as a peace officer anywhere in California, the Register notes.
Aguilera and another San Bernardino officer, Fidel Ocampo-Rodarte, were among 20 California officers facing possible decertification in 2023, according to the Los Angeles Times, which reported that Aguilera received a temporary suspension in March 2023 and that Ocampo-Rodarte faced a suspension issued March 1 in connection with a firearm allegation. Ocampo-Rodarte's own case involved a November 2022 arrest after he allegedly fired his service weapon into the air outside a mountain tavern while off duty and drinking, a case detailed by Police1, which reported that surveillance video circulated and that he turned himself in after deputies could not locate him.
How the Case Reached Federal Court
The woman filed her lawsuit accusing Aguilera of using his police authority to pressure her into a sexual relationship in San Bernardino Superior Court in January 2024. The case was later removed to the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California in July 2024, under case number 5:2024cv01593, according to Justia Dockets. The court held a bench trial on December 1, 2025, before Judge Kenly Kiya Kato.
Judge Kato found Aguilera liable for negligence, sexual battery, false imprisonment, and violating the plaintiff's civil rights through threats, intimidation or coercion, per the Register's account of the ruling. Kato issued initial findings of fact on April 29, 2026, awarding the plaintiff $2 million in general damages, before the court amended those findings on August 5, 2026, adding more than $949,000 in attorneys' fees and nearly $31,000 in additional costs. Those awards were incorporated into an August 24 judgment totaling more than $2,980,000, entered by Judge Kato that same day.
A Law Built to Hold Departments Accountable
The legal path in the case traces back to California Senate Bill 2, enacted in September 2021, with its provisions taking effect on different dates. Per LegiScan, the law created California's first centralized authority to revoke peace officer certifications for serious misconduct, a mechanism the state had lacked even though most other states already had one. The same legislation amended the Tom Bane Civil Rights Act, restricting statutory immunity protections for officers and municipal employers facing civil rights lawsuits involving coercion or threats, according to standards published by the San Mateo Police Department.
Despite POST's decertification finding of coercive sexual abuse and the federal civil judgment of sexual battery, public records indicate no criminal charges have been brought against Aguilera. That gap has prompted a community advocacy petition on Change.org demanding criminal charges against Aguilera. City officials did not respond to the Register's request for comment as of September 8, 2026.
