Judge orders jail time for ex-Metro officer who hugged, groped woman on duty

A former Metropolitan Police Department officer left court in handcuffs Tuesday after a judge ordered him to spend 30 days in jail for hugging and groping a woman while on duty.

“Filling a position as a police officer, you take on a grave duty to the public and it’s one in which the public trust is critical and that was fully undermined in this instance,” District Judge Eric Johnson said, calling the officer’s actions a “wanton misuse of his position.”

Manuel Ramangmou, 28, pleaded guilty last month to a gross misdemeanor count of oppression under color of office.

The plea was an Alford plea, which allows a defendant to maintain innocence while acknowledging prosecutors have enough evidence to prove their case.

In the early hours of May 9, Ramangmou responded to the 3400 block of East Sunset Road, near South Pecos Road, for a call about a suspicious vehicle. There, he found a woman named April Woolum sleeping in a van.

She said she was living in her van and agreed to leave.

Then, he later admitted to detectives, he turned off his body camera and approached her again to ask if she was single and get “her information to hangout,” an arrest report stated.

Ramangmou acknowledged hugging her in a wooded area that he selected because it was hidden and asking her for a kiss, which she declined, the report said.

Woolum alleged that he also rubbed her buttocks. She told investigators that she was “shaking and terrified.” At a prior hearing, she asked that he be ordered to serve jail time.

“He wanted sex. He was relentless,” Woolum said at a prior hearing. “For about the next three months, I lived in fear.”

Johnson’s sentence was harsher than the sentence prosecutors agreed to recommend of credit for the one day Ramangmou already served in jail and the probation sentence defense attorney Warren Geller requested.

The judge had previously warned attorneys that he might impose jail time and gave Ramangmou the opportunity to withdraw his plea.

Geller said the former officer would instead go forward with the sentencing.

Johnson had also raised concerns about a sentence in the plea agreement: “The State agrees not to proceed on the additional crimes discovered in his phone.”

Deputy District Attorney Julia Barker previously said the evidence on the phone showed two instances of soliciting prostitution involving adult sex workers, which would be nonviolent misdemeanor offenses.

Geller said after court that he was not sure prosecutors had probable cause to establish that anything in his phone was a crime, but that he did not receive phone records.

“Manny’s obviously very remorseful about what took place and he’s looking forward to starting a new chapter of his life,” he told a reporter.

Woolum did not speak in court Tuesday, but her attorney Carl Arnold voiced approval of Johnson’s decision after the hearing.

“I think that’s a just sentence that gives Ms. Woolum some comfort to know that this judge took this case seriously enough to give him some time in custody and make him reflect on his actions,” he said.