Pittsburgh police said Monday that they are reviewing previous arrests made by a suspended officer accused of bribing women for sexual favors to see if there are more cases of possible misconduct.
Officer Adam Skweres, 34, a five-year veteran working out of the Zone 3 station in Allentown, was charged last week with crimes including coercion, official oppression, indecent assault and bribery stemming from three cases in which women told investigators he offered them legal aid in exchange for sex acts and a fourth in which a woman said he tried to rape her.
The allegations date back as far as June 2008, when he had been on the job for only about 18 months.
Sources said police are examining Officer Skweres' cases and arrests but would not say what, if anything, their efforts have yielded so far.
Officer Skweres, who was suspended without pay upon his arrest, remained in the Allegheny County Jail on Monday while awaiting an electronic ankle monitoring bracelet for his house arrest pending trial. His attorney, Phillip DiLucente, expected him to be released today.
The officer could face additional charges after police this weekend discovered crack cocaine, marijuana and narcotic drugs prescribed to someone else in his duty bag inside of his Dodge Durango. People other than Officer Skweres had access to the Durango while he has been in jail, so there's a chance the items are not his, Mr. DiLucente said.
Also inside the duty bag, detectives found Viagra pills, a box of three condoms with one missing, and a piece of paper with one of his accusers' name and cell phone number on it, according to a police report.
The number belongs to a woman who told investigators that Officer Skweres came to her home in full uniform on Feb. 11 and tried to rape her when she refused to give in to his demands for oral sex. Police said he had arrested the woman's boyfriend in November and remained in touch with the couple to use them as informants.
On that day, police said, he forced her to perform a sex act on him, cleaned himself with a paper towel and put it in his pocket.
In applying for a warrant to search Officer Skweres' vehicle, detectives told a judge that they were seeking "a soiled white select-a-size paper towel," as well as his uniform jacket and notebooks.
They searched the officer's house in Lincoln Place on Friday, hoping to find "the paper towel that was used by Skweres after the assault and to collect Skweres' uniform items for possible evidence related to the charges filed," according to that search warrant. They took his uniforms and paper towels, police said.
The woman, whom the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette will not identify because she says she was a victim of sexual assault, referred questions to her attorney, Ken Fryncko. He said "she feels betrayed by the fact that a person in power is taking advantage of one of the most vulnerable segments of society."
Officer Skweres had arrested the woman's boyfriend and was "leveraging that in putting her in a position of vulnerability. That's why he had her cell phone number," Mr. Fryncko said. "The whole system failed in this case. It's not just him. It comes down to, who is training, who is hiring, who is supervising these people?"
His client reported the incident to the FBI, which prosecutors have said led to Officer Skweres' arrest. Through a police spokeswoman, Deputy Chief Paul Donaldson declined to comment on the case or how it was handled, saying only that it remains under investigation.