The county's top prosecutor said Friday that her office is still reviewing a cache of tapes of suspects' statements made and kept by an Oceanside police officer, maybe as far back as 2002.

"They (staffers) will be, of course, listening to the tapes, trying to get their arms around it," San Diego County District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis said. "We view our obligation very seriously to review them."

Once the review is done, her office will turn the tapes over to defense attorneys, she said.

Dumanis also said that Oceanside police Officer Damon Smith faces no criminal liability for failing to turn over the tapes he made of his interactions with suspects and witnesses.

It is not illegal for police to record interviews with suspects or witnesses. The catch is that recordings of statements by suspects or witnesses are evidence in criminal matters. The statements are required to be turned over to prosecutors, who then are required to share them with defense attorneys.

Smith has not responded to the North County Times' requests for comment. But Dumanis said Smith and the police department have been "cooperative" as prosecutors have worked to rectify the matter.

If the recordings reveal significant new evidence -- if they might have changed the outcome of a case -- there is a chance the suspect could get a new trial.

Neither Dumanis' office nor Oceanside police have said how many tapes exist, or how far back they go. Smith has worked for the department continually since his graduation from a police academy in 2002.

Dumanis said that once her office learned of Smith's stash, they quickly notified defense attorneys.

"I want to be clear that as soon as we found out about this, we jumped right on it and proactively reached out to (defense attorneys)," Dumanis said.

Smith's stash came to light in late April, when he testified during a misdemeanor case that he possessed a taped interview with the defendant, but had not entered the recording into evidence.

Dumanis said that when her staffers told her about the undisclosed tapes, they also came armed with a plan for tackling the task at hand.

Two deputy district attorneys at the downtown offices of the county prosecutors are working on the case, she said, as are deputy district attorneys in Vista, which is where the majority of the affected cases probably are.

Now, prosecutors must figure out just whose voices are on the tapes, and which cases might be affected. And then they are legally required to get those tapes to the defense attorneys who represented the accused person in each case.

Public Defender Steve Carroll's office represents the accused in about 90 percent of the criminal cases in the county. He said he expects to have to specially assign someone in his office to review the tapes once Dumanis' office turns them over.

Through his spokesman, Oceanside police Chief Frank McCoy has said he does not believe the tapes contain anything that will jeopardize any cases in which Smith or other officers were involved.

During his stretch as a homicide detective, Smith worked as an investigator on the 2006 shooting death of Oceanside police Officer Dan Bessant. Dumanis said Friday there is no indication that he failed to turn over any recordings in that case.

While still a recruit in training at the San Diego Regional Public Safety Training Institute, commonly referred to as a policy academy, Smith filed a claim against the city of Oceanside and academy leadership, alleging race and sex discrimination and wrongful termination.

According to his June 2001 claim letter, Smith, who is a black heterosexual male, said he was unfairly targeted by a training officer who was white and a lesbian. The claim also states that his testing and evaluations showed he was excelling both physically and academically at the academy. He alleged Oceanside wrongly fired him without investigating the "false" reason behind the academy's recommendation to let him go.

The letter states Smith, then 25, left a high-paying job to pursue his "dream of becoming a policeman." He asked that he be reinstated.

Seven months later, according to city records, Oceanside gave him back his job.

Without admitting to any wrongdoing, the city agreed to rehire Smith as a policeman, pending his completion of training at an academy offered by Riverside County law enforcement.

According to Oceanside police, Smith has been continually employed with the department since 2002. He graduated from the law enforcement academy hosted by the Riverside County Sheriff's Department.

He worked as a patrol cop, and in August 2006, moved into investigations, where he spent time as a homicide detective. Smith moved back into a patrol car in November 2008, long before the tapes came to light.

Contact staff writer Teri Figueroa at 760-740-5442.