A police union leader fired after an opioid smuggling arrest pleads guilty

SAN JOSE, Calif. – The former executive director of a Northern California police union pleaded guilty in federal court Tuesday to charges she illegally imported synthetic opioid pills from India and other countries.

Joanne Marian Segovia, executive director of the San Jose Police Officers’ Association, was charged last year with illegally importing thousands of valeryl fentanyl pills. She faces up to 20 years in prison.

Segovia’s plea before a federal judge in San Jose was part of an agreement with the U.S. Attorney’s Office, which agreed to lessen the severity of her charges, Mercury News reported. She only said “yes” when the judge asked her to confirm and explain her understanding of her guilty plea, the newspaper reported.

Starting in 2015, Segovia had dozens of drug shipments sent to her home in San Jose from India, Hong Kong, Hungary and Singapore, with the contents listed in the manifests as “wedding party gifts,” “gift makeup,” “chocolate and candy.” and “food” listed was supplement,” a federal criminal complaint states.

Segovia at times used her work computer to place the orders and at least once used the union’s UPS account to ship the drugs within the country, federal prosecutors said.

The police association fired Segovia after completing an initial internal investigation following the allegations. Segovia, a civilian, had worked for the union since 2003, planning funerals for officers who died in the line of duty, acting as a liaison between the department and officers’ families and organizing company parties and fundraisers, union officials said.

Federal prosecutors said that in 2019, U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents intercepted a package containing $5,000 worth of tramadol, a synthetic opioid, mailed to her home address and sent her a letter telling her they had the pills confiscated. The next year, CBP intercepted a shipment of tramadol worth $700 and sent her a seizure letter, court records show.

But federal officials didn’t begin investigating Segovia until 2022, when they found her name and home address on the cellphone of a suspected drug dealer who was part of a network delivering Indian-made controlled substances to the San Francisco Bay Area, according to the complaint. This drug trafficking network distributed hundreds of thousands of pills in 48 states, according to federal prosecutors.