Corrections officer arrested with daughter present
San Tan Valley, AZ — The Pinal County Sheriff’s Office said an eight-year veteran of the Department of Corrections stole nearly $1,100 in Wal-Mart merchandise with his own daughter with him. This isn’t his first run-in with the law. So how was he still working in law enforcement?
Hugo Rivera was first cited with a misdemeanor shoplifting charge in June, but kept working until his most recent arrest. We’ve learned there are a few reasons this information could have fallen through the cracks.
Three separate times in a two-week period, PCSO said 32-year-old corrections officer Hugo Rivera loaded a Wal-Mart shopping cart full of detergent, wine, beer, and small appliances and walked out without paying.
The sheriff’s office said his 4-year-old daughter was with him each time. He was arrested Tuesday, after deputies confronted him at the store.
It turns out, Rivera had been banned from Wal-Mart after getting cited for shoplifting at a Mesa store in June. So why had he still been working at Florence prison?
“If there is what we call negative law enforcement contact, something perhaps above a misdemeanor speeding citation or parking ticket, something like that, the employee is required, under our department policy to let the department know,” said Doug Nick, with the Department of Corrections.
He said though PCSO alerted them about this most recent arrest, they never knew about Rivera’s June shoplifting charge.
Mesa police said it’s possible the officer didn’t get a chance to ask Rivera where he worked, or that Rivera wasn’t truthful.
“You’re working with criminals all the time in your posting at a prison, it’s very important that your behavior be exemplary,” Nick said.
We went to an address we found for Rivera; we found his father, instead, who said he didn’t even know he had been arrested.
Nick said Rivera has a relatively clean record and had just shown up late to work a few times and got a speeding ticket several years ago. He has resigned in lieu of termination.
