Sacramento CHP officer faces drug, DUI charges from Citrus Heights arrest
A Sacramento-area California Highway Patrol officer is on administrative leave following his arrest by Citrus Heights police last week on misdemeanor drug charges, according to CHP officials.
“The employee’s peace officer powers have been removed, and the employee has been placed on administrative leave pending the outcome of the investigation,” CHP officials said in a statement announcing the officer’s arrest.
William Griffith Clotworthy II, 35, was arrested Oct. 10 by Citrus Heights Police Department officers in the area of Antelope and Lauppe roads on suspicion of possessing a controlled substance, and driving under the combined influence of alcohol and drugs, Citrus Heights police arrest logs showed.
“The CHP takes all allegations of employee misconduct very seriously,” the agency’s statement continued. “When an employee is suspected of misconduct, the Department takes swift and appropriate action to investigate the allegations.”
Earlier in Clotworthy’s career, he had been cited for heroism for service during a deadly 2018 mudslide in Montecito. He and his patrol partner at the time were nearly swept away by torrential rains that pummeled the Santa Barbara County community of Montecito in the early hours of Jan. 9, 2018. The mudslide sent rivers of mud, boulders and debris that flattened homes and left 23 people dead in its wake.
Clotworthy and then-partner Michael Fabila escaped the flow and went back to work for much of the next 24 hours blocking traffic on Highway 101, actions their CHP superiors said saved lives.
Clotworthy, then 28, and his partner’s patrol car was carried away by the debris flow as they drove along a local road. Clotworthy was behind the wheel, he recounted for the Santa Barbara County publication Noozhawk.
“It was completely normal to us at that point, some mud in the road,” Clotworthy told Noozhawk. “Once we kind of stopped in it, I realized it was high water, not just a little bit of mud, and all of a sudden you could see the tree branches and a huge tree stump.”
The powerful debris flow “just hits us full force and picks us up and at that point there’s no traction, no control,” Clotworthy recalled.
The CHP officer was booked by Citrus Heights police into Sacramento County Main Jail, but was no longer in Sacramento County custody, jail records showed.
The CHP said it “fully supports a thorough investigation” into the incident.
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