Arizona Republic Review of Sex-Crime Cases Finds Failures by Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office
Read it all here. It’s an involved accounting. A public service, really, showing the lack of service from the sheriff’s office.
In the spring of 2007, a 17-year-old Mesa girl reported to the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office that she had been repeatedly sexually abused by her father.
A detective failed to follow up on her report for nearly nine months. By then, the girl and her mother had lost the will to cooperate in prosecution.
In May 2008, the girl’s brother reported that he had been sexually abused by his father. This time it was reported to Mesa police. Detectives interviewed the suspect, Brian Hester, within three days, obtaining a confession about the girl’s abuse that the Sheriff’s Office had ignored a year before.
Sheriff’s detectives, unaware Mesa police had arrested Hester, approached the family months later to try to restart their investigation. “We said, ‘He’s already been arrested,’” Hester’s ex-wife recalled. “My daughter and I looked at each other and said, ‘Oh, isn’t that a little late?’”
[…]
An Arizona Republic investigation into the 400-plus reopened cases reveals the Sheriff’s Office failed to adequately investigate reports of abuse and assault — in some cases never interviewing a suspect or running a background check. Some cases were ignored — the files were later found sitting in a drawer or in a deputy’s garage. Those shortcomings, combined with lengthy delays in resolving cases, left alleged predators free to continue finding other victims, sometimes for years.
[…]
I hope Joe Arpaio lives long enough to spend at least a decade in jail.