DUBLIN — An Alameda County Sheriff’s deputy is under administrative investigation — and scrutiny from the local public defender — after his own body camera recorded him sending gorilla emojis to someone while booking a Black man into county jail.
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The text, made public after body camera footage of the 2025 arrest was turned over to the arrested man’s attorney, has already led to the dismissal of felony drug charges and threatens to upend a pending elder abuse case. It has also led to a judge ordering the deputy to sign a consent form to release his Apple data, after he said the phone he used to send the text was subsequently lost, court records show.
But Deputy Georgio Herrera, in an interview with this news organization, maintained that the blowback is the result of a simple misunderstanding. He said it’s routine for him to send gorilla emojis and GIFs to celebrate accomplishments. It signifies “beast mode,” he said, adding that the people who see it as something racist simply don’t know what’s in his heart.
“Those who really know me — who I really am, my character — they all know these allegations are the furthest thing from the truth,” Herrera said. “I am not racist, I don’t racially profile people, I treat everyone the same, with respect.”
Chief Public Defender Brendon Woods, along with his colleagues in the office, was skeptical. He said his office has been trying for months to get context for the emojis contained in Herrera’s phone. They’ve been met with resistance from Alameda County’s lawyers, he said.
“If there are truly innocent explanations, I am just somewhat at a loss that the phone that had these gorilla emojis was all of a sudden lost after there had been multiple requests by our office to preserve the phone,” Woods said. “It’s really simple — all we want is to see the phone and the text messages on the phone. And I’m not sure why they’re fighting us so hard on this. If you have nothing to hide, show us the phone.”
Recently, Judge Thomas Stevens sided with Woods’ team, signing an order requiring Herrera to ask Apple to release his metadata, which is expected to then be turned over to defense attorneys in a pending elder abuse case where Herrera arrested the defendant. In the interview, Herrera said he had no problem signing the form and that the loss of his phone was a simple accident, not something suspicious; he placed it on the hood of his patrol vehicle during an arrest, drove off, and later tracked the phone as it left the area and headed into Oakland, he said.
“Someone picked it up,” Herrera said.
Last July, Herrera was sued by the family of Anthony Anderson, a professional trumpet player Herrera and Deputy Pedro DeRobles shot and killed in San Leandro in February. The suit alleges the two deputies “unnecessarily escalated the situation by yelling several overlapping and conflicting commands” and then killed him. Anderson allegedly held two sharpies wrapped in tape but didn’t have a gun, and had called 911 that night to say he planned to go on a “killing rampage,” according to police.
Herrera and DeRobles have already been cleared by a departmental review, according to the sheriff’s office. The incident has been added to the long list of shootings being reviewed by the California Attorney General under a 2021 law which requires all officer-involved fatal shootings of unarmed civilians to be independently investigated and has created a massive backlog of cases that have stayed under review for years.
This controversy comes just as an East Bay police scandal involving racist texts is winding down. In 2023, hundreds of racist texts involving group chats within the Antioch Police Department were publicly released, resulting in a massive administrative probe that led to firings, resignations, and discipline. Several of those officers used racist slurs, including referring to Black people as “gorillas” and sending pictures of gorillas to symbolize Black men they arrested.
But Herrera said it takes on an entirely different meaning for him — his friends exchange them to celebrate accomplishments, like a solid arrest, getting a woman’s number at a social event, or a good workout at the gym.
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“I own two hoodies with gorillas on them from Silverback Gymwear,” Herrera said. The term “Beast Mode” is widely associated with Marshawn Lynch, the former Oakland Raider and Cal Bear known for bone-crunching runs while carrying the football.
In July 2025, Herrera was booking a 62-year-old man on suspicion of drug transportation when he received a gorilla emoji from an unknown person and sent one back, along with a text. Video from Herrera’s body camera showed the emoji swap but the text is illegible. The video shows Herrera sending a GIF of a gorilla running in circles then closing his phone and heading to the gates of Santa Rita Jail, as “How Do U Want It” by 2pac blasts on the police cruiser’s speakers.
The video was turned over to the Alameda County public defender’s office as part of a discovery production; when the 62-year-old man’s attorney brought attention to it, the District Attorney dismissed the case, according to court records. Further scrutiny in the elder abuse case has led to the Internal Affairs investigation, which is still pending. Herrera remains on the job in the meantime; he has not been placed on leave.
Sgt. Roberto Morales, an information officer for the Sheriff’s office, said Herrera has been cooperative and urged the public to be patient while the investigation continues. In the meantime, he said, the agency is “limited” in what it can say.
“The Alameda County Sheriff’s Office takes allegations of racism, bigotry and misconduct seriously,” Morales said in an email to this news organization. “We recognize the importance of maintaining the public’s trust and are committed to ensuring that all members of our organization are held to the highest standards of professionalism, integrity, and accountability. Racism and bigotry have no place in the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office, and Sheriff (Yesenia) Sanchez will not tolerate such conduct.”
In the elder abuse case, filed last year, Herrera and his partner arrested a man in Castro Valley on suspicion of attacking a woman in her 80s on the street. The man’s public defenders say their client was disoriented, clearly experiencing a psychiatric delusion, and appeared emaciated when the deputies knocked him to the ground, screamed at him, and threatened to hurt him if he didn’t comply. Alameda County’s lawyers have called it an “uneventful” arrest and said that the man “resisted.”
They’ve also pointed out the defendant has a Hispanic last name and that Herrera isn’t a key witness, saying that the gorilla emoji controversy shouldn’t even factor into the case. Deputy Public Defender Jenny Brandt, one of the man’s lawyers, says it shows a history of “dehumanizing” conduct against people of color and of “racial bias.”
“That is directly relevant to the claim here that Herrera treated (the defendant) as if he was a drug addict criminal as opposed to someone suffering from a medical emergency because of his own implicit biases,” Brandt wrote in court filings.
Herrera said he was simply responding to a call for service that day. A dispatcher told him a man was punching people on the street, so he and his partner drove to the location and arrested the assailant, he said.
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“I had to do my job,” he said.
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