Ex-sheriff's sergeant challenges demotion

A sergeant demoted to deputy — after the Yuba County Sheriff's Department says he violated an order by continuing to contact a female officer he was once engaged to marry — is challenging his demotion.

Teng Saechao, 43, understood he violated the no-contact order three times and expected to be disciplined but believed he should have been suspended rather than demoted, Administrative Law Judge Marilyn Woollard said in her December ruling upholding the sergeant's demotion.

Saechao had also said taking the drug Ambien for sleeping problems led to his unknowingly violating the Sheriff's Department no-contact order for three months because the drug induced "complex behaviors" of making rote telephone calls without any memory of such behavior, Woollard said.

Saechao, with the Sheriff's Department since 1991 in units including the SWAT team, was promoted to sergeant in 2000, then demoted to deputy in 2007 for insubordination and violation of department policies. Saechao and the female deputy were engaged in 2003 but broke up that same year, Woollard wrote.

His March filing in Yuba County Superior Court challenges the demotion, seeking reinstatement as sergeant and back pay, with interest.

Saechao and his attorney, Steven J. Brock, declined to comment — as did the Sheriff's Department.

Yuba County Counsel Dan Montgomery said he agrees with the ruling upholding the Sheriff's Department's demotion.

"We'll present our side of the case and let the decision-maker make the decision," Montgomery said.

Saechao and the female deputy had a videotape of a consensual sexual encounter that he said was made Feb. 14, 2006, but that she said was made before October 2003, Woollard said.

The videotape was an issue because the couple disputed when their relationship ended — he said late in 2006 but she said late in 2003.

Saechao, who stopped taking Ambien in April 2007, said when taking the drug that he'd sometimes find half-consumed food on his bedside table but didn't remember putting food there, the ruling noted.

"His teenage daughter told him that she saw him put some beers into the refrigerator at night. He dropped one and left the broken mess," Woollard wrote. "His daughter thought he was sleep walking."

Dr. Gary Sokolov, medical director of jail psychiatric services for Sacramento County as well as an expert on Ambien, testified in the state hearing that the manufacturer of the drug issued a 2007 warning advising that a minority of Ambien users may experience complex behaviors — including "sleep driving," phone calls, sex and eating — that they do not remember.

Sokolov said tasks from learned memory, "such as calling a familiar phone number or racking a shotgun for a police officer," could be consistent with such complex behavior.

Saechao's lack of memory of phone calls to the female deputy is consistent with the side effects associated with Ambien, the psychiatrist said.

The female deputy had said that in the early hours of March 30, 2007, she received a voicemail message that sounded like a shotgun being racked, followed by a second message with Saechao whispering, "I will love you always," Woollard said.

The woman's new boyfriend, a California Highway Patrol officer, also heard the voicemails, Woollard said.

The Sheriff's Department, after the female deputy had asked Saechao not to contact her and complained to a lieutenant about ongoing, unwanted phone calls from Saechao, issued a no-contact order in 2007, according Woollard.

A Feb. 2, 2006, letter from Saechao to the female deputy included a polygraph examination he'd taken to prove his fidelity to her, Woollard said.

The Sheriff's Department said Saechao, after receiving the no-contact order, made 39 calls to the female officer in a 10-week period beginning in February 2007. Saechao said he may have been intoxicated during some of his phone calls after having a glass of wine or a few beers, Woollard's ruling said.

Woollard concluded that regardless of when the relationship between the two ended, Saechao's continuing calls to the female deputy in 2007 created a hostile work environment.

Saechao's conduct after February 2007 also violated the Sheriff's Department no-contact order, Woollard said. Saechao's testimony that he experienced side effects from Ambien is not credible and so does not excuse his repeated violations of the Sheriff's Department order, Woollard said.

Saechao received the department's Silver Medal of Merit this year for unselfishly risking his life by saving a person in a November 2007 suicide attempt on the McGowan Parkway in Olivehurst.

A lieutenant called Saechao, a night relief patrol sergeant in 2007 who supervised up to eight officers, "one of our best field commanders."