Ex-CHP Officer Gets 8 Years for Teen-Age Prostitution Ring

A former California Highway Patrol officer accused of running a prostitution ring of teen-age girls out of his Huntington Beach apartment pleaded guilty to 25 felony counts and three misdemeanors at his preliminary hearing Monday and was sentenced to eight years in prison.

William Scott Taylor, 49, could have faced a possible 16-year sentence if convicted. But in an agreement approved by Orange County Superior Court Judge Luis A. Cardenas in Westminster on Friday, Taylor agreed to plead guilty to charges ranging from pimping and pandering with a minor to possession of cocaine for sale. Prosecutors noted that the plea would spare the youngest of the teen-age girls, who are 14 and 15, from testifying.

“I think it was a fair agreement,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Connie F. Johnson said. “It’s difficult to make people understand how traumatic it is for these young girls to have to take the witness stand.”

Taylor, a nine-year veteran of the CHP, took disability retirement in 1979 after an accident while on duty near Palm Springs. In 1983, he was arrested in Las Vegas on a pimping charge involving a young woman and pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor. He was fined and placed on probation.

Huntington Beach police began investigating Taylor a few months ago, after they learned that he was taking in young girls at his apartment near the city’s pier, then sending them out into the streets as prostitutes.

Taylor, in a low voice with his head bowed to avoid news cameras, admitted to all of the allegations against him, one by one, in Municipal Judge Floyd H. Schenk’s courtroom. The charges involved a woman in her mid-20s, two girls who were 17, and the 15- and 14-year-olds. They had been working for Taylor for about a year, according to police.