Audit of sex-crimes unit

The problematic cases first came to light after the El Mirage Police Department publicly complained in late 2007 that the Sheriff’s Office had failed to properly investigate dozens of sex-crimes cases while under contract to help police the community.

The number of cases under review grew beyond those in El Mirage, to include more than 500 as deputies discovered dozens had been left untouched in file cabinets, and 40 more were stashed in a detective’s garage.

Investigators concluded that 95 of the 500-plus cases were properly handled but that more than 400 cases needed to be reopened to bring them up to the agency’s standards.

The sheriff’s audit broke down the primary reason for reopening the cases:

» 120 required contact with the victim, complainant or witnesses.

» 116 required other work that included making contact with an out-of-state victim or suspect, or reviewing another agency’s report associated with the case.

» 68 were missing supplemental reports.

» 48 needed research or comparison with El Mirage police reports.

» 19 required contact with or research on a suspect.

» 17 needed detectives to do legal research with prosecutors.

» 5 required some additional evidence collection.

» 15 showed no sign that a detective had worked the case.

Those numbers, however, don’t give a full picture of the investigative failures, a Republic analysis shows.

The sheriff’s audit identified a single, dominant shortcoming in each investigation. The Republic’s examination took into account every deficiency auditors identified for each case, some of which had three or four identified problems.

While the sheriff’s audit showed 15 cases in which no investigation was conducted, a Republic analysis of the audit found that more than twice as many cases, 36, were not investigated.

The Republic also found that 138 cases needed contact with victims, compared with the 120 that the sheriff’s auditor identified. And 70 needed contact with a suspect, while the audit put that number at 19.

The newspaper’s analysis also found 48 cases that had at least some issues with evidence, and more than 200 that were missing supplemental reports, which reflects a lack of follow-up by detectives. In cases in which there was a complete record, one in six showed that detectives took 10 days or more to review the initial crime report.

Critics of the Sheriff’s Office, including the U.S. Justice Department, have pointed to El Mirage to bolster their arguments that the Sheriff’s Office disregards or discriminates against Hispanic crime victims and suspects. El Mirage has a large Hispanic population.

But The Republic’s analysis found that hundreds of the audited sex-crime cases were reported in other communities, including Queen Creek, Mesa, Phoenix, Anthem — even in Arpaio’s hometown of Fountain Hills. And in a number of cases, the ethnicity of the victim was not noted. Often, neither the identity nor the ethnicity of the suspect was known. In cases in which ethnicity was noted, the majority of victims and suspects were White, followed by Hispanics.

Sheriff’s administrators, now in the process of wrapping up a long-running internal probe into the botched investigations, blame the errors largely on Hendershott, saying he ignored concerns about staffing levels in the special-victims unit, and on supervisors in the division, who allegedly failed to monitor their detectives’ work.

Hendershott, in turn, said the chiefs of the agency’s various divisions set staffing levels. “In retrospect, I very much regret giving up the approval amination, according to the family’s claim. During the investigation, a nurse noted that there were no obvious signs of an assault, but investigators still collected samples that were later provided to the Arizona Department of Public Safety laboratory for testing, according to the claim.

Two months later, the lab reported that semen was detected on some of the items, and the DPS advised the Sheriff’s Office that investigators would need to collect a sample from a suspect for comparison. Instead of collecting a sample from Sabrina’s uncle, Patrick Morrison, sheriff’s investigators closed the case as “inactive” in early 2008. It wasn’t until June 2011 that the case was reopened and a DNA sample subsequently obtained from Patrick Morrison, according to the claim.

By then, with the allegations unheeded, Patrick Morrison had repeatedly abused his niece, according to the $30 million notice of claim the family has filed against the Sheriff’s Office, asserting gross negligence in its handling of the case. He pleaded guilty to child molestation earlier this year and was sentenced this month to 25 years in prison.

Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman Allen said the blame for additional victims lies with the

MARICOPA COUNTY CHIEF DEPUTY JERRY SHERIDAN and review authority to the area chiefs regarding personnel because that was at the heart of the failure,” Hendershott said. “Once we learned of the problems, the sheriff and I did everything right.”

Hendershott said he took the matter to Arpaio as soon as he learned it was a problem, noting, “I met with Sheriff Arpaio every day, twice a day and sometimes more.”

Hendershott was fired in April 2011 for alleged misconduct and has sued the office for wrongful termination.

The Sheriff’s Office acknowledges systemic failures such as poor training, inadequate case-management protocols and ineffective cooperation with agencies that have expertise in dealing with abuse victims. In the last three years, it has addressed many of those shortcomings. Some of the sexcrimes cases, however, are still being investigated, and the Sheriff’s Office anticipates potential lawsuits from victims and their families.

The first lawsuit is already in the works. Sabrina Morrison reported to her junior-high counselor in March 2007 that her uncle had sexually assaulted her on the Mesa property he shared with Sabrina’s family.

The Republic generally does not name victims of sexual crimes. Morrison and her family granted permission to use their names in stories about their case, as have several others named in this series.

Sheriff’s deputies followed up immediately with investigators on Morrison’s case. Investigators accompanied the family to a center in Mesa for an ex- abusers. “I understand our need as a society — and the media’s needs — that they want to point a finger of blame. We have accepted that this is partially our problem,” Allen said. “We’ve apologized for it.

“(But) if we had done more work and put somebody in prison, maybe they would have gone to prison and then killed some other inmate. Are wethen responsible for that, too?” she asked. “At what point do you look at the situation and say, ‘Yeah, the agency screwed up; they’re trying to fix it. But the real responsibility for these crimes lies with the individual’?”

Overwhelming caseload

The special-victims unit was formed in the early 2000s, when the agency abandoned the practice of allowing detectives in the sheriff’s six geographic district offices to handle criminal investigations that arose in their areas. The idea, part of a national law-enforcement trend, was to have specially trained detectives manage these cases. Sex-abuse crimes can be hard to investigate because the abuser frequently is an acquaintance or family member, making the decision to disclose the abuse and cooperate with prosecutors more difficult for the victim.

The unique nature of sexabuse cases led to the development of protocols in each Arizona county that dictate best practices on collecting evidence, when to interview victims and suspects, and how to present a solid case to prosecutors.

“A lot of it had to do with the sensitivity toward child victims and the realization that a lot of the cases were familytype cases and were very difficult to prosecute,” said retired Superior Court Judge Ronald Reinstein, who helped develop the protocols in the mid-1990s. “The family relationships, the emotions involved, the reluctance of kids and family to come forward — we thought if we had a more coordinated approach, we could be more successful.”

The sheriff’s special-victims unit was built to address those issues. But only four detectives were assigned to the unit, and they drowned under their caseload, said Brian Beamish, a retired sheriff’s captain who supervised detectives in the office. Within a few years, Beamish said, problems began to emerge that were exacerbated by the refusal of sheriff’s administrators to add manpower or allow overtime.

“There’s a science to it. Forensic interviews — it takes time, you’re dealing with fractured people. Just to get through to them … takes time. Writing search warrants: Win, lose or draw, it takes about six hours just to write one,” said Beamish, now a consultant in Southern California.

“At any given time, the sergeant of sex crimes has 160 man-hours to work with,” Beamish said, calculating the available hours of four employees working 40 hours a week. “You can slice and dice it however you like, but you only have 160 hours.”

Other priorities

The understaffing in the special-victims unit was due in part to the Sheriff’s Office’s priorities — and the specialvictims unit was not one of them, according to a half-dozen current and former sheriff’s employees.

Despite a Maricopa County hiring freeze prompted by the faltering economy, the Sheriff’s Office from 2005 through mid-2008 was hiring 45 to 50 new deputies annually and tackling initiatives that included counterterrorism and homeland-security enhancements. The office also embraced immigration enforcement, sending 60 deputies and 100 detention officers through a federal immigration-training program and creating a human-smuggling unit with at least 15 dedicated deputies.

Staffing in the special-victims unit remained unchanged during those years: four detectives.

Deputy Chief Scott Freeman wrote a memo to Hendershott in 2006 or 2007 decrying the inadequate manpower in the unit, according to the Sheriff’s Office. Several other supervisors had already made similar complaints, according to former sheriff’s administrators.

“He appealed to the chief deputy in a memo that said, ‘Please, we need more people,’ ” Allen said.

Hendershott denied receiving that memo.

The Sheriff’s Office was allocated more than $600,000 in fiscal 2007 for six full-time positions for “investigating cases involving sexual abuse, domestic violence, abuse and child abuse.” The Sheriff’s Office

See SHERIFF’S OFFICE, Page A17