Ex-Police Worker Gets Probation in Theft Case
A former South Pasadena police employee has pleaded no contest to misdemeanor grand theft and has been sentenced to two years probation and 200 hours of community service with a Caltrans work crew.
Erik Ryan Wanson, 19, also must repay $1,065, an amount he stole from a bag of money that good Samaritans had found in the street and had turned into the Police Department.
Prosecutors had charged Wanson with a felony, but a judge reduced the charge to a misdemeanor in exchange for a no-contest plea Aug. 8.
“It was a forced plea over our objection. We wanted a felony charge,” said R. Dan Murphy, deputy district attorney in charge of the district attorney’s offfice in Pasadena.
Authorities alleged that Wanson stole the money from a bag of cash receipts from a restaurant turned into him at the police station’s front desk.
In April, Wanson came under suspicion after Ralph Viscuso of JJ Steakhouse in Pasadena complained to police that the bag of money returned to him was short of the total lost.
Viscuso made the complaint after he learned from the good Samaritans that they turned in a much larger sum of money.
After Wanson was charged in May, he was fired.
Start your day right
Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
