AURORA | Former Parker Police Sgt. Troy Brienzo, 31, was indicted by a Douglas County grand jury April 3 on charges of unlawful sexual conduct and official misconduct.
The charges are linked to alleged behavior toward two adult participants in Parker’s Police Explorer Program during ride-alongs.
Brienzo acted as adviser to the program, which consists of youths 14 to 20 and includes learning case law, defensive tactics, attending competitions and ride-alongs with officers, Littleton police reported to investigators.
On Jan. 3, according to the indictment, Brienzo invited one of the female explorers he supervised to a nighttime ride-along, and picked her up at the Parker Police Station at about 8 p.m. During this ride along, the affidavit states that Brienzo spoke to the explorer about his sexual fantasies of having sex in the back of his patrol car, asking her if, “hypothetically,” asking her to do so would ruin their relationship.
“How fire would it be if I were to have a rider and I could just reach my hand over and start touching them,” he asked her, according to the affidavit. The explorer told investigating officers that she felt uncomfortable at this point, but he continued talking about other sexual “hypotheticals” and fantasies, asking her about her sexual fantasies and preferred age range, even as she tried to steer the conversation to different topics.
According to the affidavit, he eventually said none of his questions were hypotheticals, and she rejected them, she told investigators.
She said he then asked if she ever had a crush on him, which she said she did at 16 as an explorer, according to the affidavit. Brienzo responded that he thought she was attractive at 16, and that he found another explorer’s “butt” attractive, but that he “knew his attraction to her was wrong.”
The age of the other explorer was not made clear in the redacted affidavit.
The explorer explained to investigating officers that he asked for a photo of her naked — which she refused — and described more fantasies such as a sexual pat-down even as she tried to steer the conversation away again, and continued to persist about a “more touchy” search of her.
The affidavit stated that the explorer “told him if that was going to be enough for him, then she would agree to it.”
They arrived back at the Parker Police Station at about 11 p.m. where Brienzo told her they needed to have a story as to why they would be in the “equipment area” alone together.
In that area, Brienzo took off his body camera and began a “pat-down,” groping the explorer under her shirt and above her pants, according to court documents. Afterward, he said she could not tell anyone as it could ruin his career and “look really bad” for her.
He then drove her to an empty parking lot and asked to perform oral sex on her, according to the court reports. She refused. He then spoke on how “hot” it would be if she came to his hotel room during the next explorer competition, she told investigators. The explorer told the interviewing officer that this “freaked her out” because she felt there was nothing she could do as he was a “sergeant and she was not.”
The night ended at almost midnight with Brienzo driving the explorer back to her car in the Parker police department parking lot.
The next day, the affidavit states, the explorer told a friend and fellow explorer about the evening along with an officer. A few days later, Parker police Commander Jacob Schuster told Brienzo he was being put on administrative leave for sexual allegations against him.
At a later date, unclear in the court documents, Brienzo began asking questions of other officials linked to his defense.
The affidavit stated that Brienzo called a friend at the Colorado Bureau of Investigation asking for advice, explaining the situation as him showing her a pat-down for weapons, asking if he could check down her bra, and her agreeing. He called it “wanted contact by the explorer and agreed upon between two adults.”
The affidavit describes another explorer that Brienzo allegedly had sex with in his patrol car in a high school parking lot, but it is unclear the age of the explorer and when it occurred.
Criminal justice experts say Brienzo’s case mirrors convictions for similar crimes by law enforcement officers across the nation.
“It’s a crime of opportunity where not only has he got her alone, he’s got a gun and a badge in a police car,” said Philip Stinson, a criminologist and professor of criminal justice at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. “There’s a predator aspect and an opportunity aspect here, and it’s consistent with many other arrests of police officers over the years.”
Stinson is the principal investigator of the Henry A. Wallace Police Crime Database which tracks crimes committed by nonfederal law enforcement officers across the country. He told the Sentinel there’s been dozens of these examples of officers being arrested for cases involving teenagers in explorers programs across the country, cropping up as often as a few times a year.
Brienzo’s case is consistent with other examples of sexual crimes against teenagers in explorer programs, according to Stinsen, though others are most often involving 14 or 15 year olds.
“It’s not a one off,” he said. “It’s a problem that was identified 25 years ago, so it’s a known problem that has been largely ignored.”
Stinsen is referencing a 2003 study by Samuel Walker and Dawn Irlbeck that explicitly describes a “disturbing pattern of police officer exploitation of teenage girls” in explorers programs across the country.
“We have a bunch of these cases,” he added. “You are under the cover of darkness, you can go anywhere you want and no one is going to come up to the car because you’re a cop, so there’s so many aspects where this can go off the rails.”
Brienzo resigned Feb. 13, while under investigation, according to Colorado’s Peace Officer Standards and Training database. He is being represented by a Douglas County Public Defender. The Public Defender’s Office did not respond to multiple phone calls for the name of his attorney.
Reporter Andrew Fraieli directs BlueSurveillance.org, a non-profit research group focusing on police conduct and discipline.