The city of Santa Monica has agreed to pay $230 million to settle hundreds of lawsuits tied to a former city employee who volunteered with the Police Activities League to help underprivileged children.
A settlement of $122.5 million involving 124 people, bringing the final total to $230 million, was approved this week to resolve the legal claims brought against the city over the actions of Eric Uller, an alleged sexual predator who worked with boys in the nonprofit organization’s after-school program.
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Uller often drove to Santa Monica’s Latino neighborhoods in police vehicles, befriending youths that he would allegedly later rape and molest.
Court documents accuse Uller of preying on vulnerable boys whose parents were in the country illegally and suggest the city ignored complaints about him for decades.
“You have to understand in this liberal city, this is a black and brown part of the city, and no one in the government was watching out for our kids,” City Councilman Oscar de la Torre told the Los Angeles Times. He said the behavior took place “under the shield of law enforcement” and “not one person lost a job” as a result of it.
Uller, who killed himself in 2018 after being charged with multiple counts of molestation, came from a prominent and wealthy family. He signed up as a mentor for troubled youth in 1989 as part of an initiative to combat a surge in gang-related violent crime in impoverished parts of the southern California city. He started to target boys between 8 and 15 from the Pico neighborhood, said attorney Brian Claypool, who represented 80 alleged victims.
One, who was 12 when he met Uller, claimed he was bribed with “money, baseball cards, Dodger tickets, [and] lunch” into going on rides with Uller where he was repeatedly raped and sexually abused.
Another, who was 11, claimed Uller offered to take him to his father’s medical office under the pretext of getting a physical needed to play sports, but where he was instead abused.
Uller started off as a 911 dispatcher but quickly rose in the ranks to become the principal systems analyst for Santa Monica’s information technology department. He spent most of his time overhauling the 911 system, overseeing the city’s surveillance cameras, and beefing up traffic violation databases. Even though he was heralded as a tech genius, several of the city’s employees lodged complaints against him, including retired Santa Monica Police Lt. Greg Slaughter, who headed up the communications center where Uller had been the lead systems analyst.
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Slaughter said he launched an investigation into Uller after a supervisor claimed he had turned on Uller’s computer and found child pornography. Slaughter claimed he reported Uller to the chief of police at the time, James Butts, who did nothing. Butts is currently the mayor of Inglewood.
Others, including a female detective with the sheriff’s juvenile office as well as a police sergeant, started to question Uller’s behavior and “closeness” with the at-risk minors, but their concerns were largely ignored.
Pressure on Uller began to mount in 2018 when he was arrested on suspicion of molesting four boys. Following his arrest, six more people came forward. The 50-year-old was found dead of an apparent suicide in his apartment on the day he was supposed to show up to court.
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Santa Monica Mayor Gleam Davis said the city has “modified virtually every program in this community that addresses youth.
“I want to make sure everyone understands that this was a sad chapter of the city’s history, and we hope and pray that this will never happen again,” she said. “Our hearts go out to the victims who experienced so much pain and heartbreak.”