The Contra Costa County District Attorney’s Office has reached a plea agreement with a sheriff’s deputy accused of filing a false police report, possessing an illegal assault weapon, and preparing false evidence.
Matthew Allen Buckley, 42, has agreed to serve three years and eight months in prison, which he can serve on mandatory supervised release if he completes a six-month drug rehab program.
Because of the felony convictions, Buckley will no longer be able to serve as a law enforcement officer or possess firearms and ammunition. Buckley was a deputy with the Contra Costa County Sheriff’s Office. He was charged in February 2023 with six felonies and one misdemeanor related to offenses that occurred in 2020 and 2022.
Prosecutors said Buckley pleaded no contest to three felonies, including possession of an illegal assault weapon, filing a false police report, and preparing false documentary evidence, as part of the agreement.
The case began in September 2020 when Buckley, assigned to the Contra Costa County Anti-Violence Support Effort task force, participated in executing a search warrant in Antioch. During the operation, Buckley seized two AR-15s, phones, laptops, heroin, and drug paraphernalia. After seizing the AR-15s, Buckley authored a police report where he falsely claimed to have booked the firearms into evidence.
Instead of booking the illegal weapons, Buckley separated the upper sections from the lower sections of the firearm. Prosecutors said Buckley returned possession of the upper sections of the firearms to the original owner, but never returned the lower sections of the firearms.
Investigators discovered Buckley created false documents and signed for a judge without his consent on multiple search warrant returns for unrelated cases.
As the investigation was concluding in August 2022, deputies searching Buckley’s residence found the lower sections of the AR-15s and a small amount of methamphetamine.
A spokesperson for the District Attorney’s Office said Buckley’s case is separate from the federal and county misconduct cases against Antioch and Pittsburg police.
4 comments
Why would you steal the lower and leave the upper? Full auto trigger group? Gucci ambidextrous lower from LMT or something? The accuracy and reliability is mostly in the quality of the upper, not the lower.
Anyway, lying to judges and forging signatures, who does he think he is, the FBI? (Kevin Clinesmith was a DOJ attorney that committed perjury on a FISA warrant to survail Trump associates. He was sentenced to 12 months probation and kept his law license.)
The lower receiver is the only serialized part on the rifle. You can buy an upper over the internet but you have to go through an FFL to transfer the lower. In addition, he needed something to book into evidence to make his written and evidence report appear to match.
It was a really stupid plan on his part but meth and intelligence hardly overlap.
If the lower were ever checked by law enforcement it would have show the firearm was seized as evidence and it would have led back to him in the end.
He broke the faith and God was watching. Alpha Mike Foxtrot.
I know it’s serialized, but I presume a (previously felony free) police officer could get one with little trouble. I mean, if you’re going to steal an AR out of evidence, might as well take the whole thing, or at least the upper so you can slap it on your own lower at home.
But yeah, Meth and decision making don’t really go together, so I’m probably over-thinking it.
If you or me did that, they’d ravage us criminally and civilly. There’d be no plea agreement.
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