Sunday morning, Dallas police officer David Kattner was arrested for allegedly using his authority to coerce a woman into having sex with him while he was in uniform. An arrest affidavit obtained by The Dallas Morning News says Kattner called a woman and told her to follow him to the 9700 block of Webb Chapel Road in North Dallas. Once there, he allegedly forced her to have oral sex with him in his marked police car. He kept one of his hands on his gun throughout the assault, the affidavit says.
Detectives in the area saw Kattner and the woman, according to police, and stopped the woman when she got out of the car. She told the detectives that the Sunday morning attack was the third time Kattner assaulted her. According to the News, the affidavit does not identify the alleged victim as a prostitute specifically, but says Kattner contacted "known female prostitutes" in order to force them to have sex with him while he was working a second job. The woman, police say, said Kattner showed her her outstanding warrants and threatened to harm the woman's daughter if the woman didn't do what Kattner wanted.
Kattner is the second Dallas cop in the last two years arrested for illegal activity with sex workers.
Jose Luis Bedoy, a former Dallas vice cop, resigned in 2013 after being arrested for trading police information for sex. When he was caught, he told the woman he gave information to that she should leave town and get rid of her cell phone. He was convicted of obstructing a federal grand jury investigation in October.
In 2010, rookie police officer Jeffrey Thorn was fired for allegedly forcing two prostitutes to have sex with him during the same shift so they could avoid arrest.
It's worth noting the Kattner was part of a group of five police officers who sued D Magazine for defamation after a 2007 article that accused them of issuing tickets to prostitutes and the homeless for offenses that didn't happen so the cops could later pick them up on the felony charge of not paying misdemeanor tickets. The cops lost the lawsuit.
Kattner has been placed on administrative leave pending the result of the investigation. He is assigned to the Northeast Patrol Division and is 26-year DPD veteran.
