Ex-Scottsdale cop who had sex on duty faced sexual assault allegations

Last month, Arizona’s police certification board levied a one-year suspension against former Scottsdale police Sgt. Derok Roach for repeatedly having sex in his police vehicle while on duty. But records from an internal Scottsdale police investigation into Roach show that he initially faced much more serious allegations.

An accuser, whose name has been redacted from an internal investigative report released to Phoenix New Times, claimed to internal investigators that Roach sexually assaulted her on six occasions, including digitally penetrating her, pulling down her top and putting his mouth on her breasts, forcing her to perform oral sex and attempting anal sex without her consent. The woman also accused Roach of surreptitiously filming her during sex and once refusing to leave her home.

Roach admitted the sexual encounters to investigators but adamantly denied that any of them were nonconsensual. The investigators wrote they were unable to prove or disprove the assault, nonconsensual filming and trespassing allegations, having no evidence other than one party’s word against the other. Those allegations were listed as “not sustained,” but investigators did find that Roach violated the department’s policies and, on four occasions, displayed “conduct unbecoming a police employee.”

Roach chose to resign on Feb. 28 before he could be fired. Scottsdale referred the criminal allegations to the Phoenix Police Department for an investigation, but the internal investigation report released to New Times listed the case as closed. Phoenix police spokesperson Sgt. Rob Scherer confirmed on Wednesday that the case was closed because Roach’s accuser declined to participate in the investigation.

“Detectives did contact the victim of this alleged incident, who refused to cooperate with the criminal investigation,” Scherer wrote in an email.

The unnamed accuser told investigators that she and Roach had dated for roughly two years. Though identifying information is redacted, the investigative report heavily implies the accuser worked for the police department at the time. During a different investigation into the conduct of Scottsdale Det. Amanda Carey, Carey also told investigators she had a two-year relationship with Roach during the same period. However, it’s not publicly known who made the allegations against Roach, who could have been conducting relationships with multiple women in the department.

Records do show Carey suspected Roach of cheating on her, which landed her in hot water with the department. Carey faced an internal investigation of her own for improperly running the license plate of a car parked outside of Roach’s home, which she later admitted to investigators. According to a police spokesperson, Carey received a letter of suspension for 20 hours of unpaid disciplinary leave and is still working for the department.

New Times attempted to contact Roach via several emails and phone numbers associated with his name but was not successful. A request for comment from Carey, sent by way of Scottsdale police, was not returned.

A statement attributed to Scottsdale police’s public information office, included with the internal investigation report, said: “We take all such allegations seriously and ensure they are thoroughly investigated.”

Parking lot sex

According to the investigation report, Roach and his accuser often met up in his police vehicle while he was on duty, where many of their sexual encounters – consensual in his telling, nonconsensual in hers – occurred over a two-year period from 2022 to 2024.

Several of those encounters took place in empty parking lots late at night. Roach admitted to sexual encounters with the woman in his vehicle in the parking lot of Paradise Valley Mall, a cul-de-sac near the Scottsdale Airport, in the parking lot of the Scottsdale First Church of the Nazarene on Hayden Road and the New Life Community Church on Scottsdale Road. According to the report, investigators confirmed Roach’s location and that he was on duty using timecard and GPS data.

In her complaint, which was filed in November, the woman claimed Roach first sexually assaulted her in his car in June 2022 in a parking lot at the Paradise Valley Mall, where he allegedly “committed sexual assault in the backseat of his assigned work vehicle while on-duty.” She also said she bruised Roach’s leg when she tried to push away from him. Investigators noted that Roach texted the woman the next day and made reference to the bruise, though the text itself is not included in the report.

Roach told investigators that was the first time he had sex with her but insisted it was consensual.

The woman told investigators that Roach forced her to perform oral sex near the airport, attempted anal sex at her home, digitally penetrated and fondled her breast at the New Life church and had “nonconsensual intercourse” at the Church of the Nazarene. She also provided investigators with a text from Roach in which he rather forthrightly admitted to having sex on duty just after having been promoted to sergeant.

“Ohhhhh lol the church,” he wrote in response to a photo of the Church of the Nazarene. “Love that spot first time I had sex with u on duty as a sergeant.”

The woman also accused Roach of secretly recording them having sex on two occasions in November 2022 and February 2023. She said she heard him watching a video on his phone and recognized her own voice, protesting that he hadn’t told her he was recording. Roach claimed to investigators that she knew he was recording.

Roach insisted all the encounters and filming were consensual and told investigators that the woman “is probably the most adventurous person I’ve ever been with.” He also admitted that he knew it was inappropriate to have sex while on duty in his service vehicle. “If it’s wrong, it’s wrong, like, it is what it is and I understand that,” he told investigators.

The woman also claimed that Roach asked her to have sex in a room at HonorHealth Scottsdale Osborn Medical Center on June 13. Though the investigative report doesn’t explicitly say so, that’s the same day that Scottsdale officer Ryan So was killed by an accidental firearm discharge and the same hospital that So was rushed to in the aftermath. Roach appeared to reference that in his interview with investigators.

“Are you kidding me? When my friend got killed, yes, that was on the top of my mind,” he said, with apparent sarcasm. “‘Yeah, (redacted), let’s sneak off into a room.’ Absolutely not. Oh my God. That’s sick. That’s sick. Wow.”

The internal investigation includes no finding about Roach’s alleged request for sex at the hospital.

In the investigation, Roach mentions an order of protection taken out against him by the woman. Scottsdale records show someone requested such an order against Roach last October, though it’s not clear from the online docket who filed it, whether it was granted and, if so, whether it is still being enforced. New Times has requested the records from the Scottsdale Municipal Court but has yet to receive them.

The internal investigation didn’t sustain any of the sexual assault allegations, seemingly unable to sift fact from fiction between Roach’s and the woman’s competing accounts. “There is no independent evidence to support or refute either (the woman’s) or Sgt. Roach’s recollection of events that the sexual encounter was not consensual,” the report notes.

Inappropriate snooping

Separate from the internal affairs investigation into Roach, Carey got in hot water for doing some snooping on her own.

In June 2024 – according to a second internal investigation report, which was opened five months before Roach faced complaints – Carey inappropriately used a police database to look up information about a car parked in front of Roach’s house because she believed Roach was cheating on her. When a superior confronted her about her suspicious use of the Arizona Criminal Justice Information Center, known as ACJIS, Carey initially offered the lame excuse that she’d punched in the license plate as “an accident” and that she “fat-fingered it.”

Carey then admitted she’d used the database for personal reasons and later admitted the same to an internal investigator.

It’s not clear if Carey’s indiscretion was investigated by the Arizona Peace Officer Standards and Training Board, which licenses all law enforcement officers in the state and is one of the few entities with the power to punish cops. AZPOST did look into Roach, suspending his law enforcement license for a year.

However, that punishment appears light when compared to that of former Yuma Sgt. Andres Angulo, whom the board suspended for three years in June after he allegedly kissed and had sex with at least two department employees while off duty and grabbed one’s breasts and buttocks while on duty. Angulo also faced assault, sexual assault and disorderly charges, though it doesn’t appear they were prosecuted.