A Tulare County police officer was sentenced Tuesday for a series of rapes he did while on duty, including one in uniform, prosecutors said. Oscar Robles, 30, raped two different victims between April 2017 and January 2018, threatening to use his official powers as a Woodlake officer to arrest them if they did not submit to the sexual assault, the Tulare County District Attorney’s Office said.
He was sentenced to 10 years and eight months in prison on Tuesday, prosecutors said. The DA filed 12 felony counts in 2018 against Robles, accusing him of sexual assault of two victims while under color of authority, witness intimidation, dissuading a witness, false imprisonment, and assault by a peace officer. The investigation began Sept. 11, 2018, after deputies patrolling near Visalia came across a man and a woman walking, investigators said. The woman said a Woodlake police officer had sexually assaulted her. A second woman was soon found who said the same thing happened to her. In one assault, Robles was in uniform, investigators said. Robles, in April 2017, was involved in an officer-involved shooting in Woodlake that left a man paralyzed.