Sandy MaloneLas Vegas, NV – A Las Vegas Metropolitan police officer was arrested on Tuesday after investigators determined she had abused her position to get information about individuals for her friends and filmed videos of suspects in custody for her own entertainment.
The arrest report said that Las Vegas Metropolitan Patrol Officer Rachel Sorkow looked up the criminal histories and other information on citizens for the benefit of herself and her friends on 19 occasions, KTNV reported.
Officer Sorkow usually looked up the information for friends and family who wanted to know if a boyfriend or girlfriend had a criminal history.
She also looked up information for another female officer in her department who thought her ex-boyfriend had stolen her car, according to KTNV.
That officer used the information Officer Sorkow found to go to the ex-boyfriend’s house and confront him.
The arrest report said that Officer Sorkow, on at least seven occasions, filmed video with her personal cell phone of suspects in custody performing purely for her entertainment, KTNV reported.
Then she shared the videos with friends and other officers whom she thought would be amused by the antics.
“Sorkow would order these individuals, some of which were handcuffed, all of which were in her control, to perform a wide variety of acts while video records them with her personal cellular phone,” the arrest report said, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
In one video filmed in April of 2017, Officer Sorkow ordered a mentally-disabled man who was wearing a dress to twerk for her, and filmed it, according to KTNV.
Then she told him to show her how to “Superman,” the arrest report said.
When she was done mocking the man, she sent the video to three people and referred to the suspect as a “shim,” a derogatory term for a transgender individual.
Officer Sorkow also recorded a video in November of 2017 that showed another officer force-feeding gummy bears to a suspect in custody at her direction, KTNV reported.
“Partners with the community, feeding criminals gummy bears,” she said in the video, according to the arrest report.
“Partners with the Community” is the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department’s (LVMPD) slogan and is prominently featured on all of their police vehicles, KTNV reported.
Officer Sorkow filmed two videos of one overweight woman in January of 2018 while she was responding to a potential domestic violence incident, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported.
The arrest report said the officer sent the videos to at least eight other people.
First, she asked the woman what she loved to eat, and the woman talked about donuts and brownies.
Then Officer Sorkow instructed the woman to pull down her pants and expose her belly and asked if she got the gut from eating donuts.
In the second video of the large woman, the officer asked her if she was breastfeeding and the woman replied that she wasn’t, according to KTNV.
The woman began rubbing her right breast and told Officer Sorkow that she had the “boobs to do it.”
The arrest report said that Officer Sorkow filmed three videos of a man who was arrested for exposing himself in front of a convenience store, KTNV reported.
In the first video, she told the man to “do that again” and the man raised his right leg and kicked the car.
Because of big holes in his pants, the action exposed his genitalia to the full view of Officer Sorkow and anybody else in the vicinity, according to KTNV.
Officer Sorkow was giggling and zooming in as she filmed the video.
The second video of the same man featured Officer Sorkow telling the suspect to show her “how to dougie” in the backseat of the patrol vehicle, KTNV reported.
The third video captured a conversation between Officer Sorkow and the suspect about the size of his genitalia.
The police report said Officer Sorkow used racial slurs during her conversations with the man.
She sent the videos to friends, family members, and other police officers, KTNV reported.
The arrest report also said that Officer Sorkow had shared pictures taken during the investigation of a child neglect case with friends, including screen shots of the police report that included personal information.
Officer Sorkow was arrested and booked on five counts of misconduct of a police officer, indecent exposure, and capturing an image of another person’s private area, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported.
The police report said she told investigating officers that she’d made the videos without “malice intent” because she “thought it was funny,” the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported.
Officer Sorkow claimed the people featured in the videos were fine with her filming and sharing them.
“Was it right of me? No. But I’m not gonna sit here and tell you I didn’t laugh,” she told detectives during a Feb. 19 interview, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported.
Officer Sorkow was put on paid administrative leave on Dec. 4, 2018, the Daily Mail reported.
A preliminary hearing in the case is scheduled for June 10, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported.