NEWPORT BEACH, Calif. (KNX) — According to a letter obtained by The Orange County Register, a Newport Beach police supervisor expressed concerns that the O.C. District Attorney’s Office was attempting to cover up allegedly racist comments made by D.A. Todd Spitzer.
Court Depweg, an acting lieutenant in the Newport Police Department’s detective division, sent the letter to a judge on Feb. 3. In it, said he had warned the head of the D.A.’s homicide division that “the actions by his office would affect our working relationship moving forward and it was disappointing that he and so many of his colleagues would try and cover this matter up, as we all know ‘the cover-up is always worse than the crime.’”
In the letter, Depweg accused staffers in the D.A.’s office of informing the court and defense attorneys for a homicide defendant, Jamon Buggs, that they would not seek the death penalty against him, circumventing victims and law enforcement. The letter also described “information from multiple sources” that Spitzer made “an unsolicited, derogatory, and racist comment about Black men/persons.”
Those comments possibly concerned Buggs’ dating history. Buggs is Black, and according to a memorandum prepared by a former senior A.D.A., Ebrahim Baytieh, Spitzer theorized during a prosecutorial strategy meeting that the defendant dated white women to “enhance [his] status.”
Spitzer fired Baytieh a week ago, claiming the dismissal resulted from an investigation into whether Baytieh withheld evidence in a 2010 murder case, which resulted in the conviction being overturned.
Baytieh and his allies said he was fired for acting as a whistleblower on Spitzer’s alleged racist remarks. Spitzer has insisted he was misquoted, and his remarks taken out of context.
Regarding the Depweg letter, Spitzer told the Register his office was “very limited in what we could say because we had already gone to the judge and the issue was being litigated in court.”
“It is completely understandable that there would be some confusion by other parties because the ongoing litigation prevented us from discussing details of the proceedings,” Spitzer said.
“When my head of homicide expressed to me that Newport Beach police had questions about the status of the case and asked if I would take a phone call, I told him they could call me anytime,” Spitzer added. “No one ever called me.”
Newport Beach police have declined to comment on Depweg’s letter.
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