The Monterey County Public Defenders office is assembling a team to investigate whether there have been any wrongful convictions due to the work of potentially corrupt police officers in King City.
The formation of the "Public Integrity Unit," as the team is called, comes after the February arrest of six King City officers accused of everything from embezzlement to accepting bribes.
"Obviously these officers and their credibility are at stake," says Assistant Public Defender Don Landis. "We're going to do our own investigation to ensure justice is being provided to everyone."
The investigation team will be made up of five attorneys, including Landis. They'll comb through all King City cases in the past three years that the arrested officers were connected to "directly or tangentially," Landis says.
"I don't know what other actions they were doing…or if there are other insidious police tactics that were used," he says. "If we can expose them given our review, we will."
The Monterey County District Attorney’s Office has already dismissed at least three cases involving the King City police due to potentially unreliable evidence.