A former California State Parks superintendent is staring down a mountain of criminal charges after allegedly planting hidden cameras inside a lifeguard locker room and recording employees for nearly a year. This one is absolutely jaw dropping.
Kevin Pearsall, 59, from Long Beach, appeared in court Thursday facing five felony eavesdropping counts, 23 misdemeanor charges for covertly filming individuals, and three additional misdemeanors for illegally distributing private recordings, according to Trending Politics. His lawyer asked to push back the arraignment, and a judge agreed. He returns to court on September 21.
Here is the kicker. This guy was not some random creep off the street. Pearsall held a sworn law enforcement position. He oversaw state park operations across the Orange Coast District, including all of Orange County, from 2023 through July 2025. That is an enormous amount of power and trust, and prosecutors say he allegedly weaponized every bit of it.
At least nine alleged victims showed up to Thursday's hearing. Lifeguards Matthew Dawson and Richard Corey both told reporters they spotted Pearsall smiling in the hallway. Dawson said his stomach dropped when their former boss walked past him. He told reporters that this was not some kind of joke and called it another game for Pearsall.
Corey described the emotional fallout as devastating. Anger, sadness, and betrayal all hit at once when state officials first revealed the investigation to employees. He called it the highest level of betrayal, especially given Pearsall's law enforcement role.
Prosecutors allege the secret recording operation ran for at least 11 months starting in August 2024. The whole scheme unraveled when someone discovered a USB memory stick containing a hidden camera inside the men's employee locker room at lifeguard headquarters in July 2025. California State Parks officials reviewed the device and called in the Highway Patrol.
What makes this even more disturbing is that lifeguards were reportedly instructed to arrive in civilian clothes and change into uniforms at work so they would not resemble law enforcement officers in public. That policy put them directly in front of the alleged hidden cameras.
Prosecutors say Pearsall allegedly shared images of nude or partially clothed men with two other individuals and made sexually charged remarks about their bodies. Attorney Mark Peacock, representing several alleged victims, revealed that four of his clients were underage when they were allegedly recorded. He raised an alarming question about whether any footage ended up on the dark web.
Attorney Gloria Allred announced Thursday that she now represents nine alleged victims and plans to file another lawsuit. A separate civil suit was already filed in June in Orange County Superior Court, alleging hostile work environment harassment, sexual harassment, and institutional failure.
One plaintiff's attorney, Ron Zambrano, alleged that Pearsall gave his client a locker positioned at a better angle for the camera. Zambrano also said he learned from an investigator that this could have started as far back as 2019.
Pearsall apparently retired around the time investigators executed their first search warrant in July 2025. If convicted on every single charge, he faces up to 18 years and eight months behind bars.
California officials now face some very uncomfortable questions about how alleged misconduct on this scale went undetected inside a government workplace run by a sworn law enforcement supervisor. The lifeguards trusted this man. That trust was allegedly shattered in the most grotesque way imaginable.
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