Judge jails Oakland man who allegedly duped Orinda cop with hidden gun trick

OAKLAND — A federal judge has jailed a man who allegedly stashed his pistol inside the back of an Orinda police car, where it remained undetected for several days.

Maurice Herron, 27, was jailed by U.S. Magistrate Judge Kandis Westmore, who checked 12 of the 20 possible reasons to jail someone with a pending federal case. In a prior federal gun case, Herron convinced Westmore to release him from jail, and Westmore said she believed that he had found a decent job and was making an honest effort to change his life.

“But the evidence proffered by the government in this case showed it was not so,” Westmore wrote in her detention order issued last week.

Herron has two separate federal gun cases, one alleging he was arrested with a firearm in January 2025, and another alleging he had one when an Orinda cop arrested him last November, court records show. During the Orinda arrest, Herron allegedly took a gun from his waistband while handcuffed in the back of a police vehicle and stashed it on the floor, according to court records.

Eleven days later, another officer found the gun in the patrol car and investigators reviewed footage from a video camera inside the vehicle, which captured the alleged stashing.

Federal prosecutors also allege that Herron served as the getaway driver in a downtown Oakland armed robbery, where the intended victim killed one of the suspected robbers, 33-year-old Roosevelt Jones. Another suspected robber, 33-year-old Jashawndre Uphsaw, was later arrested and charged with murder.