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Goldwater Institute Reports Arpaio
Clears Cases without Arrest
PHOENIX (By JJ Hensley, Arizona
Republic) May 22, 2009
— The Maricopa County Sheriff's
Office clears too many cases without
arrest and the Goldwater Institute
wants legislation that would force
law enforcement to detail those
cases cleared through "exceptional
means."
The conservative think-tank used the
2001 case of a 14-year-old girl
whose allegations of sexual assault
weren't thoroughly investigated to
highlight the "serious malfeasance"
in the Sheriff's Office, but the
issue could apply to any agency in
the state, said Clint Bolick,
director of the Goldwater
Institute's Scharf-Norton Center for
Constitutional Litigation.
"This is a ticking time bomb for the
people of Maricopa County," Bolick
said. "Not only are people not
arrested in these cases, no one is
looking for them."
The Goldwater Institute could not
say how many cases other law
enforcement agencies clear by
exception- one of the main reasons
the institute is pushing for
legislation that would require
investigators to designate that
data.
The Sheriff's Office appears to be
the worst offender, Bolick said,
because the sheriff's clearance rate
on cases is higher than most other
agencies.
Sheriff's officials point to those
statistics as evidence of quality
police work, but Bolick said it
could easily be the result of
clearing too many cases through
exception instead of arrest.
"We can't say, no one can say, what
the reality of the situation is," he
said.
In 2008, the Sheriff's Office
reported to county officials that
about 1,300 of 9,500 cases
investigated, or about 14 percent,
were cleared with arrests.
The same
report shows detectives cleared a
total of about 7,200 cases. That
would mean a large majority of
cleared cases were from one of
several other ways, including the
case was unfounded or was given an
"exceptional clearance."
The FBI's standards for clearing
cases through exception state the
investigation should have:
established the identity of a
suspect; gathered enough information
to support an arrest, charge and
review from prosecutors; determined
the exact location of the suspect;
and cited a reason outside
investigators control that would
prevent arrest and prosecution.
There are no specific penalties for
agencies that clear cases through
exception without meeting the FBI
criteria.
The case of Abigail Brown is
telling, Bolick said, because if
detectives had done more than a
cursory investigation of Brown's
case in 2001, the suspects could
have faced trial.
Instead, "the detective didn't even
answer my phone calls after a month
or two," she said.
When Brown, now 23 and living out of
state, began working with local
attorneys in 2007 to force sheriff's
investigators to reopen the case,
detectives were able to identify
witnesses and suspects.
But by the
time the case reached prosecutors at
the Maricopa County Attorney's
Office, only a few weeks were left
before the statute of limitations
would set in.
Prosecutors doubted
that a jury would convict the
suspects of statutory rape 6 years
after the alleged assault,
particularly because the charges
come with a lengthy mandatory
sentence.
"It could have been done the first
time around," if investigators had
done more work, said Thomas Loquvam,
an attorney working with Brown.
While the Goldwater Institute has
set its sights on the Sheriff's
Office, Brown said she shared her
story because she didn't want other
victims to experience the same
treatment, no matter where they are
victimized.
"I'm concerned the policies and
practices of law enforcement, as
shown in my case, leave young people
completely unprotected, and the men
who commit these crimes undeterred,"
she said.
Bolick said the Goldwater Institute
was using the issue to push for
three things:
More transparent reporting from the
Sheriff's Office; an investigation
from the Attorney General's Office
or the County Attorney's Office into
the practice of exceptionally
clearing cases at the Sheriff's
Office; and legislation that would
amend crime statutes so law
enforcement agencies have to
designate those cases cleared by
arrest and those cleared by
exception.
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