Police have arrested a ride-share driver they linked to more than a dozen incidents of exposing himself and masturbating in the Southside neighborhood near the UC Berkeley campus in 2018, authorities report.
The Berkeley Police Department identified the man Tuesday as 34-year-old David Forrest Chandler Herrington. The Alameda County district attorney’s office charged Herrington on Monday with four counts of misdemeanor indecent exposure, according to police and court records.
Officer Byron White, BPD spokesman, said the man had been reported to be exposing himself and masturbating in public in the area of Dwight Way and Etna Street numerous times last year. The area has a high student population, White said: “There definitely appeared to be a draw to the student community.”
In one incident, a person looking through a window saw the man masturbating outside. At other times, he was standing in a driveway exposing himself, police said. The incidents were reported all throughout the year in the same area. White credited BPD’s crime analyst with realizing there was a pattern.
Investigators and officers then conducted several surveillance operations to try to catch the culprit. They detained Herrington loitering in the area in November because he appeared to police to be suspicious, White said. He was not arrested, but the pattern ended after that detention.
“It stopped — but our investigation did not,” White said.
Berkeley Police sex crimes detectives and patrol officers continued to look for the man as the months went by. The investigation ultimately culminated in an arrest warrant for multiple counts of indecent exposure, BPD said.
Saturday, BPD took Herrington into custody on the warrant with the assistance of the California Highway Patrol in Oakland.
White said he could not elaborate on the circumstances of the arrest.
Herrington, who has no listed permanent address, initially was held on $70,000 bail but has since been released on his own recognizance, according to Alameda County Superior Court records online.
Court records show the dates of the four incidents resulting in charges to have been June 27, Sept. 28, Oct. 20 and Nov. 4.
Herrington is set to enter a plea April 9 at the Wiley Manuel Courthouse in Oakland.
“We’re happy that we brought him to some justice,” White said.
