Ex-cop faces nearly 6 years for beating woman with baseball bat

A former Walnut Creek police officer faces more than five years in prison after pleading no contest Monday to beating a woman with a baseball bat while wearing a ski mask and gloves.

Gregory Thompson, 54, faces a maximum sentence of five years and eight months in prison for beating the woman, and then using the baseball bat to smash her car windows on Aug. 16 in Richmond, said Barry Grove of the Contra Costa County district attorney’s office.

Thompson was off duty when the attack occurred about 2 a.m. outside his father’s home in Richmond, which he suspected had been broken into after finding a vandalized window.

That night, Grove said Thompson armed himself with a baseball bat and put on a ski mask and gloves. When he spotted a woman walking in the neighborhood, he apparently suspected she was a burglar and started beating her arms with a bat, Grove said.

But a second woman who happened to be in the area tried to intervene, allowing the victim to break free.

The woman, as it turns out, was visiting a friend in the area but was on foot because her car had run out of gas.

As she hid in a bush nearby, Grove said Thompson smashed out the woman’s car window. He then took off his ski mask and gloves and threw the baseball bat in the trunk of his car, Grove said.

Police arrived to find Thompson in his car, his seat fully reclined.

He initially told police he had been sleeping, but Grove said a firefighter at a nearby station had seen him removing his mask and gloves.

“We were dubious about the veracity of his statement” to prosecutors, Grove said.

Thompson retired from the Walnut Creek Police Department on Friday, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

He is scheduled to be sentenced Oct. 10.

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