Peter Anthony Maguire committed unspeakable horrors against his victim. And after police repeatedly failed to intervene multiple times, now he won’t face any accountability for his heinous crimes.
Peter Anthony McGuire, a California police officer, who kidnapped a woman, raped her and disfigured her, won’t be charged. I suppose this is the Thin Blue Line privilege.
Chino Valley Champion reports:
It appears as if all criminal proceedings against the Chino Hills man who was charged with kidnapping and torturing a woman in his home for six months in 2022 will be dismissed after two years’ worth of mental competency hearings determined that Peter Anthony McGuire is incompetent.
In a hearing on Wednesday in San Bernardino County Superior Court in Rancho Cucamonga, Judge Ingrid Uhler said the county filed for conservatorship on Feb. 10 and in four weeks, it should become permanent.
The next hearing is March 16.
Mr. McGuire is currently housed at a medical facility in San Bernardino, according to his attorney Kirt Hopson of Downey.
Mr. McGuire was formerly kept at Atascadero State Hospital and Patton State Hospital, according to court documents.
San Bernardino County District Attorney Debbie Ploghaus said the County Counsel has taken over a Murphy conservatorship and Mr. McGuire will become a ward of the county and housed at a mental health facility.
“The reason we have to dismiss the case is we cannot prosecute somebody who has been deemed to be incompetent by the court,” she said.
Ms. Ploghaus referenced the Welfare and Institutions Code 5008H1(a) describing a condition in which a person, as a result of a mental health disorder, a severe substance use disorder, or a co-occurring mental health disorder and a severe substance use disorder, is unable to provide for their basic personal needs for food, clothing, shelter, personal safety, or necessary medical care.
Mr. McGuire was not required to appear at his hearing on Wednesday. In attendance were Ms. Ploghaus and Mr. Hopson.
“Our office knows this is frustrating for victims, families, and the community,” said Jacquelyn Rodriguez, public affairs officer for the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s office. “If and/or when the defendant is returned to competency, we are committed to pursuing justice and accountability.”
She said the law requires the DA’s office to protect constitutional rights, which in the case of Mr. McGuire’s mental incapacity, can mean delaying criminal proceedings.
Background
Mr. McGuire, who was 59 in June 2022, was charged with 22 felony counts including attempted murder, torture, kidnapping, disfiguring, and repeatedly raping a 22-year-old woman he held captive for six months at his home on Cordovan Court, off Slate Avenue, according to the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s office.
The disfiguring charges included severe injuries to her ears and scalp that required hospitalization.
The DA later filed special allegations for counts five through ten: personal infliction of great bodily injury, administering a controlled substance during commission of a sex crime, and infliction of great bodily injury during a sex offense.
Other charges were sodomy by use of force, assault with a deadly weapon, false imprisonment by violence, and forcible oral copulation.
Neighbors interviewed by the Champion after the incident stated they heard screaming and noises on multiple occasions and frequently called police.
According to the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department, the Chino Hills Police Department was called seven or eight times between January and June 2022 but no reports of domestic abuse were taken.
During one incident, five or six police units arrived and called for Mr. McGuire to come out, said a neighbor. After waiting 30 or 40 minutes, the units departed.
A Sheriff’s Department spokesperson said at the time that police cannot force their way into a home if they don’t see or hear any signs of trouble.
Eventually, the woman managed to escape while Mr. McGuire was in the house and ran to nearby Alterra Park where she was rescued by Good Samaritans.
The Champion filed a public records request with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department to obtain the internal investigation that was supposed to be conducted by the Chino Hills Police Department regarding the numerous calls for service, but was denied.
The victim had moved into Mr. McGuire’s two-story home at the beginning of 2022, and soon after was held against her will, according to the Sheriff’s Department.
When Chino Hills Police went to Mr. McGuire’s house, he had already fled. He was later found in Placentia where he barricaded himself inside a home before surrendering.
Neighbors described Mr. McGuire as somebody who mostly kept to himself. After the incident, they described him as “pure evil.”
Don Via, Jr. adds:
According to the San Bernardino District Attorney’s office, Mcguire began working as a police officer for the Huntington Park Police, located in south central Los Angeles County, in 1986. Reports show he was terminated from that position one year later in connection to the death of Acacio Ramirez in September of 1987 after Maguire and another officer responded to a domestic disturbance call and placed Ramirez under arrest. Ramirez would later die in police custody from what the L.A. County Medical Examiner-Coroner reportedly determined was “blunt force body trauma”, according to a report from the Los Angeles Times from that year.
The Free Thought Project has long contended that it should be standard practice for officers connected to criminal activity, particularly those related to physical abuse and death, to be placed on a blacklist which prevents them from working for other law enforcement agencies in the future, and so that in the instances of any future crimes other law enforcement officers are aware of an ex cop’s criminal history.
Since this is not the case, Mcguire was able to work as an officer for the now defunct Hawaiian Gardens Police Department from 1995 to 1997.
And according to the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department, at the time of the incident Maguire held two active licenses as a private investigator and a private patrol officer.
Those who came before us would have understood that both rape (Deuteronomy 22:23-24) and kidnapping (Exodus 21:16; Deuteronomy 24:7; 1 Timothy 1:9-10) are capital crimes regardless of the man’s mental capacity. This continued mercy to the criminal over the victim is becoming all too rampant in our society. On top of that, the man was an alleged “law enforcer”. If he was really this bad, what was he doing in a uniform with a badge and a gun in the first place?
