Police ride-alongs left US teens as young as 14 vulnerable to abuse, investigation alleges

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/03/police-ride-alongs-programs-abuse

Police ride-alongs left US teens as young as 14 vulnerable to abuse, investigation alleges

Deputy’s rape case highlights alleged failures in youth programs run by Scouting America, formerly Boy Scouts

Lakeidra Chavis of the Marshall Project
Wed 3 Sep 2025 10.00 EDT

In May, prosecutors in Seattle charged a sheriff’s deputy with raping a 17-year-old girl. The deputy met the teenager while he was an adviser in his department’s youth mentorship program known as Explorers.

The victim, now 24, came forward in May to report the abuse, which she alleges took place in 2017 and 2018. The assaults allegedly began after King county sheriff’s deputy Ricardo Arturo Cueva told her she was cute and that he liked her while they were alone on a ride-along in his police SUV. Cueva – who is 15 years her senior – later kissed the teenager while they were on a separate ride-along at night.

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Law enforcement departments across the country have Explorer programs – overseen by Scouting America, formerly known as Boy Scouts of America – and they have a history of sexual abuse and misconduct, as the Marshall Project reported last year. Ride-alongs, in which young people accompany officers on their patrol shifts, are a key perk of the Explorers program.

They are also a gateway to abuse.

The Marshall Project examined hundreds of abuse allegations in law enforcement Explorer programs and found that about a quarter of them involved officers on ride-alongs with teens – some as young as 14 years old.

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Throughout the 1990s, police officers in California, Kentucky and Missouri had inappropriate sexual relationships with Explorers while on ride-alongs, documents show. A 2003 report by the University of Nebraska at Omaha found that more than 40% of the cases of officers abusing teenage girls that researchers identified nationwide involved police Explorer programs.

… more … Texas … Arizona… safety rules suspended for cop ridealongs …