On-duty makeout sessions and sexting: Here’s what investigation into Pismo Beach cop found

A Pismo Beach Police Department sergeant was on duty when he engaged in explicit text conversations, sent a partially nude photo from the agency’s locker room and participated in makeout sessions at a local middle school and tennis courts for more than a year, an internal investigation found.

According to documents obtained by The Tribune via a public records request, Adrian Souza was put on administrative leave with pay in February after a woman filed a complaint alleging he engaged in sexual acts and sent explicit videos and photos while he was on the job.

The woman said she was dating Souza during the time when some of the misconduct took place, according to reports.

“When first alerted to this conduct, the city took action within hours and proceeded to conduct a lengthy and thorough investigation,” Pismo Beach assistant city manager Jorge Garcia wrote in an email to The Tribune.

Pismo Beach city and police policies specifically state employees must be focused on their job duties when on the clock, and explicitly prohibits police department employees from engaging in on-duty sexual activity.

The Police Department’s Internal Affairs Division spent three months investigating Souza’s on-duty conduct — resulting in a 50-page report with more than 240 pages of supporting documents attached to it, including text and Facebook messages, interview transcripts, time logs, photos and videos.

Investigators interviewed Souza and the woman who filed the complaint, describing her as “very credible.” They also spoke to other people who may have witnessed events.

Souza initially invoked his Miranda rights and declined to speak with investigators about the allegations, according to his interview transcript, but with Pismo Beach Police Chief Jeff Smith’s authority, investigators ordered Souza to answer all questions in the interview because it was an administrative investigation, not a criminal one.

After the investigation, the Police Department’s Internal Affairs investigation found a total of 20 potential violations of the city of Pismo Beach’s personnel rules and regulations and the Police Department’s policy manual — 13 of which were sustained.

Souza, who was employed by the Pismo Beach Police Department for 14 years, resigned before his termination could go into effect in June.

How did Pismo Beach police sergeant, woman meet?

According to the internal affairs report, Souza met the woman who sent the complaint when he pulled her over for not wearing a seat belt in July 2020.

The woman told investigators Souza was professional during the July 2020 traffic stop and gave her a warning. She had offered to give him wine to thank him for not giving her a ticket and he declined.

Souza told investigators he did not remember being offered wine, adding that he would have declined it if he was.

The two ran into each other in August 2020 at a water rescue in Shell Beach, which the woman was covering as a local news reporter, according to the Internal Affairs report.

The woman told investigators that their conversation was “flirty in nature,” adding that she did not interview Souza for her story.

Souza remembered their conversation as strictly professional, according to the report.

A few days later, the woman said, she dropped off wine for Souza at the Police Department along with her business card, which had her personal cell phone number on it, and a thank you message.

In his interview, Souza denied receiving wine from the woman.

Souza told investigators he decided to text the woman thanking her for the card, and their texting eventually became sexual in nature.

“While he did meet her while on duty and he understood the issue with that, he did not seek her out. She sought him out,” the report said. “She did not have the status of a victim or a suspect of a crime. There was nothing that either of them could gain from the other.”

Report: Officer engaged in sexual acts while on duty

According to the complaint, the two began dating a few weeks later. The woman was legally married at the time but going through a divorce, while Souza was divorced and living alone, the report said.

All sexual acts they engaged in were consensual.

They would meet up at one of their apartments — mostly when Souza was off duty but a few times while he was working — as well as Judkins Middle School in Pismo Beach and Shell Beach tennis courts, the woman and Souza told investigators.

Souza said they chose those locations because they were equidistant from the department and the woman’s apartment.

Souza said the two would hug, kiss and sometimes “make out” at these on-duty meetings, but the woman said sometimes heavy petting would also occur.

According to the report, their relationship lasted from August 2020 to April 2021, but the two kept in contact until June 17, 2021.

That’s when Souza texted the woman that he had met someone else, but he wanted to say goodbye, the report said.

The two met that evening while he was on night shift at the woman’s car parked at Judkins Middle School, the report said.

Souza and the woman began kissing and he engaged in digital penetration, the woman told investigators. After a car drove by and the driver asked if everything was OK, she said, Souza broke up with her.

That was the only time anything beyond kissing and heavy petting occurred while Souza was on duty during their relationship, the woman said.

Souza told investigators that meeting the woman in June 2021 to break up was “a moment of weakness on his part.” He said he only gave her a “peck” that night and claimed the woman reached for his penis and he pulled away.

He denied digitally penetrating the woman. He said the woman told him to block her number because “she would not be able to resist calling him.”

According to text messages obtained by The Tribune, the woman messaged Souza she was left aroused after the breakup, and Souza replied he was aroused as well.

When asked about the messages, Souza told investigators the two were aroused likely because of their conversation and not because they had engaged with one another physically, the report said.

The report confirms Souza was on duty during the June 17, 2021, meeting.

Explicit messages, videos followed breakup, investigation finds

Souza blocked the woman’s number but said she changed numbers so she could contact him. The woman said Souza texted her in September 2021 when he found out she was applying to be an officer at local police departments, including in Pismo Beach.

He told her if she got hired, she would have to work for him, text messages show.

A week after the woman did not get a job with Pismo Beach Police Department in September, Souza messaged her when he saw her walking her dog, text messages obtained by The Tribune show.

The two made arrangements to meet at the Shell Beach tennis courts and make out, according to the woman, and Souza was on duty, in full uniform and in a marked police car at the time.

GPS data that tracks police vehicles confirmed Souza was at the Shell Beach tennis courts for about 15 minutes while on duty that day, the report said.

The next day, Souza began texting the woman in a more sexual manner, the woman told investigators.

According to the report, he sent her a video of himself in full uniform — panning from his face to his pants zipper, unzipping his pants, reaching inside his pants and then panning back to his face smiling while shaking his head back and forth.

The Internal Affairs report confirms the video was taken in the Pismo Beach Police Department locker room while Souza was on duty or shortly after he was off duty.

Souza and the woman continued to meet and exchange sexual messages despite Souza’s new relationship.

“We would just sext all the time while he was on duty, only on duty,” she said in the interview transcript.

According to the report, Souza sent her explicit photos and videos on duty, and talked about how much he could “use a release” because of work stress.

Souza sent the woman a photo of his penis sticking out of his unzipped uniform pants about a month later after the video, the report said.

Souza told investigators he took the photo of his penis in the Police Department locker room before his on-duty shift began.

During this time, Souza was also texting the woman they should stop meeting at Judkins and the tennis courts because he was getting serious with his new girlfriend, the report said.

The woman told investigators the two ended up meeting at the her apartment on Nov. 16, about a week after the penis photo was sent, while Souza was on duty.

He drove to her apartment in a marked police vehicle wearing full police uniform, the woman said and Souza later confirmed.

Souza checked that his body camera was off, and the two began kissing and interacting sexually, the woman said.

“They had previously talked about doing sex acts while he was on duty, but they never did because it was so wrong,” the report said. “(Souza) reiterated that this day and told her he could not have sex with her while he was on duty but that she could (perform oral sex).”

The woman said the act was consensual even though Souza was “being aggressive about it,” she said in an interview. The visit lasted about 20 minutes because Souza received a call on his radio, she said.

According to a Facebook Messenger exchange obtained by The Tribune and cited in the report, Souza told the woman “it was such a turn-on for him to watch her (perform oral sex) on him on duty.”

Souza visited the woman at her apartment while on duty to receive oral sex at least three times between November and January, the report said, noting that Souza would “double check that his (body) camera was off” before sexual acts began.

Similar visits occurred Dec. 1 and Dec. 20, where the two met at the woman’s apartment and engaged in oral sex while Souza was presumably on duty, in full uniform and driving a marked police car, the woman told investigators.

Between the time of their breakup and the filing of the complaint, the two made plans to meet while Souza was off-duty but Souza never followed through on those plans, the woman told investigators.

The one time Souza did visit her off duty was in October, when he went to her apartment and the two had sexual intercourse, the woman said, noting that he kept his clothes on.

The final visit between the two occurred Jan. 20, the woman said. Souza was on duty and in uniform driving a marked police car, and left after receiving oral sex, she said.

But after Souza left the Jan. 20 visit, the woman felt used, she told investigators. Souza had been promising to meet her off-duty but never followed through.

On Feb. 11, the two exchanged explicit texts while Souza was at a training exercise, the woman said.

The woman was still trying to join a local law enforcement agency, which caused her to “look at her own conduct through the lens of being a police officer in the future,” the report said.

“That viewpoint made her not only be critical of her own behavior, but also that of Souza’s,” the report said.

The woman Facebook messaged Souza she was going to tell his girlfriend about his infidelity, and Souza replied telling the woman to “slow her f--king roll” and asked her to keep their relationship a secret, Facebook messages reviewed by The Tribune show.

Woman: Cops should be held to ‘highest standard’

The woman reportedly told Souza in February she felt used because he did not visit her when he was off duty. “Instead he would insist it be while on duty,” the complaint said.

“I feel Sergeant Souza took advantage of his time on duty to engage in such behavior,” she said in the complaint.

“While I expect better behavior of myself for doing such a shameful act with a taken man, I know you expect your officers to hold themselves to the highest standard of honor and service,” the complaint read.

She decided to send the Pismo Beach police chief a complaint on Feb. 15.

“She decided after a lot of thought that Chief Smith needed to know what was going on, but she also explained that she did not do that out of scorn,” the report said. “She accepts her role in this scenario and feels that Souza is not the type of officer Chief Smith would want in his organization and that is why she filed her complaint.”

The woman sent several text exchanges, photos and videos to Internal Affairs at the agency’s request, including screenshots of messages between the two planning on-duty meetups and sexting, the photo of Souza’s penis sticking outside his uniform pants and photos of his marked police car parked at her apartment and Judkins Middle School.

No one else knew about the woman and Souza’s relationship, she told investigators, and she did not confide in friends about what was going on.

GPS data that tracks city police vehicles confirmed some meetings the woman told investigators about at Judkins Middle School and the Shell Beach tennis courts, but other dates and times did not match exactly.

Souza admitted to receiving oral sex while on duty three to four times but “no more than four,” his interview transcript said.

He “generally agreed” that when the woman would perform oral sex on him while he was on duty, he would drive to her apartment, park in her driveway, go inside, receive oral sex, then leave, the report said.

Souza did not dispute that each event occurred in late 2021, but denied that he undressed the woman, according to the report. He claimed the woman pressured him to have sex on duty, and not the other way around.

Police sergeant resigns after receiving termination notice

Souza was given a notice of his termination on May 25.

In the termination notice, Chief Smith said the offenses resulted in termination because of their seriousness, the extent Souza was aware of his actions, Souza’s tenure and rank in the department, and to show other members of the department that serious infractions will not be tolerated.

He was found to have neglected his duty, engaged in on-duty sexual activity, failed to abide by standards of ethical conduct, and other city and Police Department violations, according to the Internal Affairs report and termination notice.

Souza resigned from the department prior to the findings from his employee discipline meeting being finalized. His resignation became effective June 10.

“I want to begin by saying how much I enjoyed serving the city of Pismo Beach,” Souza wrote in his resignation. “I appreciated the opportunity of doing so.”

Michael Reed, Souza’s attorney, had not responded to multiple requests for comment as of Friday evening.

This story was originally published August 1, 2022 at 10:00 AM.

Chloe Jones

The Tribune

Chloe Jones is a former journalist for The Tribune