Brace yourselves: the first round of police arrests in King City isn’t going to be the last.

Here’s how a bank robbery works. Or how it doesn’t work, because thanks to technology, they almost never do, not anymore.

One moron (or maybe two or three) pulls up outside a bank. Before they’re even physically on the property, cameras are watching everything: The make and model of the car is recorded as it drives down the street. The license plate is recorded. Dings and scratches are recorded. The faces, body types and heights of the driver and passengers are recorded. Even if the erstwhile criminals are still sitting down, police can figure out each one’s height and weight. There are algorithms for all of it.

If they haven’t bothered to switch out the license plates on their own vehicle – or steal a car they can later dump and torch – and pull on masks before they get into camera range for this little caper, game over.

They might make it inside. They might hand over a note, pull a gun or say they have a bomb. They might actually walk out with some cash. By then, multiple bank employees have tripped multiple silent alarms and police are speeding toward the location.

They’re gonna get caught. It might take a few days, it might take a few weeks, but they’re gonna get caught.

Then there are the three morons who robbed a Central Coast Federal Credit Union branch on March 25, 2013. They made it all the way to the drive-thru of a nearby Burger King before they got caught.

According to their probation reports, the driver stayed outside in the white BMW while the other two went into the bank. One pulled a gun, pointed it at an undoubtedly terrified teller and forced the manager to hand over money. The two ran out the back door, got back into the car and had made it to B.K. when police converged. Two of the guys bailed from the car, ran and were in custody a few minutes later.

The driver raced back onto the highway (going the wrong way) before bailing from his vehicle. He ran back into civilization, hightailed it through a few parking lots and tried to carjack a Toyota from a woman sitting in a Taco Bell parking lot. When he finally failed at that, he gave up.

One credit union customer, according to the probation report on then-17-year-old bank robber Ramon “Serio” Rangel, had this to say: Rangel “appeared to be ‘nice’ because he said he didn’t want the customer’s money – he only wanted the bank’s money.” Rangel, whose only record was a truancy beef, pleaded no contest to robbery and a street gang enhancement and was sentenced to five years, eight months in state prison.

Fabian “Kash Mob” Lemus, the 20-year-old who pointed the gun and carried out $24,352 in his backpack, said the robbery would have been worth it – if he hadn’t been caught. He pleaded no contest to robbery and a street gang enhancement and was sentenced to 14 years.

Getaway driver Santiago “Mofles” Rodriguez, the 20-year-old who scoped out the bank a day before the robbery, entered the same plea to the same charges as his pals. Sentence: 14 years.

Why does it matter?

Because the robbery took place in King City.

The money that was recovered – the $24,352, all counted out at a local Chase Bank branch before being taken to the King City P.D.’s evidence control room – wasn’t the same amount later turned over to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

“It was minus a small arrest fee and then a storage fee,” one law enforcement official, who asked to remain anonymous, says wryly. “What was seized, what was recovered, what was turned into evidence and what was turned over to the FBI was four different amounts.”

Salinas Mayor Joe Gunter’s mind still reels when he’s asked about the robbery – and the missing money. He’s a retired Salinas police detective with 33 years on the job, he’s on the board of Central Coast Federal Credit Union and boy is he pissed. According to Gunter, there’s $6,000 missing, in bundles of neatly wrapped twenties that were actually photographed by police before being booked into evidence.

“We didn’t get it, the crooks didn’t get it and there’s only one other party involved,” Gunter says. “It’s just pathetic in my mind. It takes away your faith in the people you gotta have faith in.”

A third of the King City police department (as well as the ex-chief, the then-acting chief and the former acting chief’s brother) are already facing felony charges that have nothing to do with the loot missing from the bank robbery.

The prosecutors decline to say if any of the officers currently facing charges that include bribery and embezzlement could be implicated in the theft of the bank robbery cash.

“WHAT WAS SEIZED, WHAT WAS RECOVERED, WHAT WAS TURNED INTO EVIDENCE AND WHAT WAS TURNED OVER TO THE FBI WAS FOUR DIFFERENT AMOUNTS.”

“That’s an open investigation, so we wouldn’t comment on that,” says Chief Assistant District Attorney Terry Spitz.

But there was money missing. Which means it’s not a question of if there will be more charges or arrests.

It’s a question of who and when.

•••

Just before 6am on Feb. 25, five teams made up of Monterey County sheriff’s deputies, FBI agents, District Attorney’s investigators and Salinas police strapped on their gear, rolled down Highway 101 and simultaneously served arrest warrants at the homes of former King City Police Chief Nick Baldiviez, King City Sgt. Bobby Carrillo, Officer Jaime Andrade and Miller’s Towing owner Brian Miller. Miller’s brother Bruce, a King City P.D. veteran and the department’s acting chief, was arrested at the police station, along with Officer Mario Mottu, Sr. Officer Mark Allen Baker turned himself in at the Sheriff’s Department.

Baker is accused of criminally threatening a King City resident, Andrade with possessing and illegally storing an assault weapon. The rest had a thing for cars. Carrillo is accused of targeting undocumented, unlicensed, Latino drivers, impounding their cars and swinging the towing business to Bruce Miller. For every 15 cars Carrillo had impounded, he received one for free, according to District Attorney Dean Flippo. And he allegedly arranged for Bruce Miller to give one of those cars to Miller’s own brother, then the acting chief.

The former chief, Baldiviez, is accused of gifting a tricked-out Crown Vic owned by the department’s Explorer Youth program to Mottu Sr. With the exception of Baker and Andrade, the charges involve embezzlement, bribery and conspiracy. All of those arrested face felonies.

Later in the day those arrests were made, Spitz, Flippo’s second in command, dispatched two letters. He sent one to Jim Egar, head of the county Public Defender’s Office and the other to Frank Dice, head of the Alternate Defender’s Office. The letters invited their assistants to cite any cases involving King City police “they think merit review.”

At a press conference announcing the arrests, Flippo said his office had already dropped at least three cases – at least for the time being – because they couldn’t rely on the evidence.

Spitz declined to identify the cases involved.

Defense attorney Steve Liner, who represented Santiago Rodriguez in the bank robbery trial, says the D.A.’s office communicated with him “at some point” during the case about potential issues involving the police.

Considering Rodriguez faced 40 years, though, a 14-year sentence isn’t bad, especially if the case didn’t need potentially corrupt testimony from King City P.D. to stand – according to the probation report, the youngest robber confessed.

But Rodriguez almost passed on taking the plea, instead wanting to go to trial. Now if Rodriguez demands to withdraw his plea and go to trial, Liner says this: “I intend to do what I will do with every case I’ve had that came out of King City. I will analyze whether I should communicate with the D.A.’s office to assess whether the case should be reopened or analyze the impact of the investigation.”

In other words, if defense attorneys think their clients might have been convicted based on unreliable King City police testimony or possibly fabricated evidence – even if it’s one of the dumbest and most obvious robbery attempts of recent memory – they’re welcome to bring it up to the D.A. and criminals just might get off.

One case that was dismissed – although Spitz says it could be revived – could lead to a civil rights lawsuit against the city of Soledad.

It involves a former King City officer who joined the Soledad force. He shot an alleged gang member who the cop says turned on him with a gun. What isn’t at issue is that the alleged gang member was hit twice, then flown to a Bay Area trauma center and charged with multiple felonies.

•••

Last Nov. 27, former King City Officer Jesus Yanez, who joined the Soledad department about 18 months earlier, was on patrol when he claimed he saw two men – one of them carrying a firearm. When Yanez tried to stop them, according to published reports, they ran and barricaded themselves in an apartment.

And then Christopher James Segobia came around the side of the apartment building, allegedly carrying a loaded weapon. And as he was allegedly running, he allegedly brandished the weapon at Yanez, who opened fire and shot him once in the stomach and once in the leg.

On Dec. 3, Segobia was charged with two counts of assault on a peace officer with a semi-automatic firearm, being a felon in possession of a firearm and exhibiting a firearm in the presence of an officer and special allegations of using a firearm. He was unable to post bail and was held at the Monterey County Jail to await trial.

“THE WAY THEY WERE DESCRIBING TO HIM WHERE THE SHOTS CAME FROM DIDN’T MATCH UP WITH WHAT HE HEARD.”

Then on Jan. 27, Deputy Public Defender Steven Rease received a surprise message. He was asked to appear in court the next day so Deputy District Attorney Cristina Johnson could ask that the charges against Segobia be dropped in “furtherance of justice,” according to court documents.

“They let me know by email they were going to dismiss pending a preliminary hearing. I thought it was unusual,” Rease says. “You usually don’t get charges of assault with a firearm on a police officer dismissed that quickly.”

Yanez maintained Segobia turned and pointed a weapon at him, and a weapon he claimed to be that 40-caliber was found at the scene. But when the public defender’s investigator talked to a homeowner near where the shooting took place, that homeowner said the police story (nine or 10 investigators had been out to talk to the man) made no sense.

“He said the way they were describing where the shots came from didn’t match up with what he heard,” Rease recounts. “He said, ‘I’m a Marine Corps veteran and I know about gunshots. I told them where the shots came from and it’s different than the version they’re giving.’”

Yanez couldn’t be located for comment. On Feb. 24, his time with the Soledad P.D. came to an abrupt end. Soledad Police Chief Eric Sills, a nearly 28-year veteran of the San Jose Police Department, declined to say if Yanez had quit or been fired.

Segobia, meanwhile, didn’t respond to the Weekly’s inquiries through social media for him and his family. He was released from custody the day the charges were dropped.

There’s another connection in the Segobia case that leads back to King City besides the fact Yanez was a King City police officer and had a major case dropped “in furtherance of justice.” And it’s one of the strangest connections in an already strange affair.

•••

On the night he shot Segobia, Yanez had a civilian ride-along in his patrol car, according to Rease.

Ride-alongs aren’t unusual, but they aren’t common, either, happening with a small fraction of patrols. What is uncommon is that the civilian, Kenneth Tippery, is an information technology contractor for King City with his own spotty past – a late 1990’s misdemeanor conviction (since dismissed) for a sex offense involving a teenager.

“We found out about Tippery during the course of our investigation,” Rease says. “There’s a recorded statement from him on what happened that night.”

More unusual still: Tippery currently has a sealed search warrant against him at the Monterey County Courthouse.

In other words, instead of being called as a witness to the attempted assault of an officer with a firearm, Tippery’s possibly being investigated himself.

Because of the nature of the word “sealed,” it’s not known why authorities are looking at Tippery, and they are resolutely not saying. The warrants are due to be unsealed in April.

What is known, though, is that on Jan. 17, less than two weeks before the case against Yanez was dismissed, officials served warrants on the King City Police Department, the home of King City police Sgt. Bobby Carrillo and, on the same day, Tippery’s King City home.

Flippo says some of the evidence being combed through involves computer hard drives and files.

King City City Manager Michael Powers says that Tippery, as a contractor, works from home. When called for comment, Tippery’s home phone number rang unanswered on multiple occasions; he also didn’t respond to messages left via email and Facebook.

Arraignments are set to take place this week and next for the King City officers, as well as towing company owner Brian Miller. The Miller brothers, as well as Mottu Sr., Andrade and Carrillo, appeared in court March 3, but none entered a plea and all asked for their arraignments to be continued.

Powers says King City will begin recruiting for a spot on the police department that opens up in May.

“It’s gonna be a tough sell now,” Powers says, “but there are people who will feel reasonably assured they are working with people of high moral character, because otherwise they would’ve been wearing bracelets on Tuesday.”

King City can be assured that – as Tippery’s strange involvement becomes clearer and more charges and arrests surface – the sell’s not going to get easier any time soon.