Embattled City Council member Omar Torres was arrested on suspicion of child molestation Tuesday, hours after submitted his resignation to the city.
The connection to a police investigation into his alleged sexual interest in minors revealed last month was not immediately clear, but the details made public in that investigation had already unleashed a torrent of criticism against the local politician.
Torres, who has been out of the public eye and absent from most of his council duties since he was initially detained and questioned by San Jose Police Department detectives Oct. 3 at City Hall, was arrested Tuesday and was expected to be booked at the Santa Clara County jail on at least one count of lewd and lascivious acts with a minor under 14.
Torres’ attorney, Nelson McElmurry, declined to comment on news of the arrest Tuesday, but he confirmed that Torres had submitted his resignation to the city earlier in the day.
Until now, Torres, 43, had not been arrested or criminally charged. It was not immediately clear based on the booking whether his arrest stemmed from a new accusation or is connected to the ongoing SJPD investigation that surfaced publicly last month. When the alleged crime occurred also could not be deduced from the booking count, since the penal code section includes circumstantial exemptions from the six-year statute of limitations.
But sources told this news organization that the arrest did not appear to be based on recent alleged acts.
A search warrant affidavit from the October interrogation — which coincided with the confiscation of his electronic devices and searches of his home and vehicle — outlined how Torres’ request for a police investigation, into a man allegedly extorting him to keep a sexual tryst secret from his partner and colleagues, eventually pointed back at Torres and his own illicit acts.
Those acts included sexually explicit text exchanges from 2022 with the man, who is from Chicago, in which they share sexual fantasies that included Torres describing the genitalia of an autistic 11-year-old boy who has a family-type relationship with him. He also claimed in the texts that he performed oral sex on a 17-year-old boy while working at an unspecified college.
Perhaps the most explosive message in the running exchange was in the midst of the two planning a multi-partner sexual encounter, with Torres asking the Chicago man if “U got any homies under 18.”
Torres told police that he had an ongoing online sexual relationship with that person going back two years; the affidavit states they last saw each other in August during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Multiple sources have told this news organization that they also met up in April when Torres traveled to Phoenix with other San Jose city staff as part of a commerce-related visit.
The man, Torres reported, had threatened to release nude photos and videos from their sexual messages. Police found that the man had harassed Torres’ partner and other people, including his staff.
The affidavit states that Torres said he initially complied with the man’s demands for money, paying more than $22,000 over time before asking for police to investigate the man.
Torres’ defense against the salacious text messages has been to claim, through his attorney, that the Chicago man goaded him into discussing “damaging” topics “under the guise of eroticism,” so that he could later extort him. Torres would also claim that the texts “do not reflect any real-world actions or intentions and were entirely fictitious.”
That has done nothing to mollify civic leaders such as Mayor Matt Mahan, Torres’ colleagues on the City Council, the San Jose Police Officers’ Association, and the Santa Clara County Democratic Party, all of whom have called on Torres to resign from his council seat. A coalition of his constituents in District 3 — which centers on downtown and its surrounding neighborhoods — have launched a recall campaign.
The recall effort is spurred in part by the city being largely hamstrung from removing Torres outright, since he has not been convicted of a felony. Other grounds for removal under city rules include a declaration of insanity, being out of the state for 60 days, and missing five straight regularly scheduled council meetings.
Torres got begrudging council approval of his absence from an Oct. 8 meeting, but he has not been granted a pending request for a 30-day medical leave — citing the toll of the police investigation on his mental health — that would excuse his meeting absences from Oct. 16 through Nov. 5.
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