Ex-LAPD Officer Found Guilty of Fondling Women

A former Los Angeles Police Department officer was found guilty Tuesday of misdemeanor sexual battery for fondling two women while he was responding to domestic violence calls.

Michael Kapalungan, 32, faces up to two years in jail for fondling a domestic violence victim and groping an undercover officer posing as one. Sentencing is set for March 16.

“His behavior was atrocious,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Valerie Aenlle-Rocha, who prosecuted the case. “When women make a phone call, when they’re in need ... certainly they don’t expect to be sexually victimized.”

During the weeklong trial, Los Angeles County Superior Court jurors listened to victim testimony and watched four videotapes that had been secretly recorded by the Police Department’s Ethics Enforcement Section.

The videos showed Kapalungan sidling up to the undercover officer during two September 2003 sting operations.

“He fondled her breast and caressed her ... played with her lips, caressed her face, her shoulders, her legs, moving his hand up her thigh, in an extremely intimate manner,” Aenlle-Rocha said. “He testified he was merely consoling her.”

Kapalungan’s attorney, Ira Salzman, acknowledged that his client “acted inappropriately” but said that “he didn’t put his hand under the clothes.”

Salzman also accused the first victim of exaggerating details because of her pending civil lawsuit against the former officer in federal court.

Kapalungan, who was hired by the LAPD in 1996, resigned from the department last October.

A grand jury originally charged him with two felony counts of sexual battery and two misdemeanors, potentially subjecting him to a maximum of seven years in prison.

After listening to victim testimony, Superior Court Judge Anne H. Egerton reduced a felony count to a misdemeanor. A felony requires evidence of sexual contact with skin.