1. Austin Police Department Solves Fewer Than 1-in-5 Rapes.
Late last year, the Police Executive Research Forum released a scathing 182-page report on the shortcomings of the Austin Police Department’s handling of sexual assault cases in the time period that spanned from 2013 until 2020.
Here are three lowlights from the report that clearly illustrate the lack of urgency and care with which sexual assault cases were handled in Austin, Texas:
“Detectives arrived at the scene or hospital in only 17% of the sexual assault cases reviewed. The proportion of cases receiving an on-scene detective response decreased from a high of 27.4% of cases in 2012 to a low of 12.4% of cases in 2020.”
“In 49% (700) of the 1,430 cases reviewed by the project team, the victim was never formally interviewed by the detective.”
“It took an average of 17 days for detectives to interview victims, and even more time passed before suspects were interviewed."
Police Chief Joseph Chacon recently told the local NBC news affiliate, KXAN, that improving sexual assault investigations “continues to be a priority” and the department is “moving forward on all the measures that came out in the PERF report.” However, as KXAN’s Sarah Al-Shaikh reported, “Chacon said he doesn’t have an updated list of improvements that have been made just yet” even as nearly six months have passed since the report was released.
In the absence of affirmative transparency from the police department, Protect and Serve filed a public records request for progress on the bottom-line metric for how successfully a police department is handling sexual assault cases: the department’s rape clearance rate.
What we learned is that of the 725 rape cases that the department handled during the time period requested (Note: the records request focused on the post-report time period—from 1/1/2021 and 03/26/2023), detectives cleared just 125—or 17% of them. That means that if a person in Austin is raped, there is an 83% chance that the perpetrator won’t be held accountable and the rape survivor will not get justice.
Given these numbers, Austinites deserve a more urgent tone, and more concrete updates, from their police chief. Or as the city council member tasked with overseeing the department’s implementation of the report told KXAN’s Al-Shaikh, “survivors deserve healing and justice” and “I would love for the speed to be quicker in terms of the overall change to our Sexual Assault Response System.”
2. Las Vegas Police Department Admits It Has No Policy In Place For Officers Accused of Domestic Violence—Despite String Of High-Profile Arrests Of Officers.
“Domestic battery by strangulation, assault constituting domestic violence with a deadly weapon, and domestic battery.” Those are the charges that were filed in Las Vegas against Jesus Gonzales-Mazo last December. Sadly, domestic violence cases are all too common in Las Vegas—and around the country. But this case is notable because Gonzales-Mazo was a star recruit who joined the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department earlier in the year.
The local CBS affiliate reported on the details of the allegation:
“On Dec. 8, Gonzales-Mazo came home around 11:30 p.m. after drinking with his friends before the two got into an argument about household responsibilities… During the argument, Gonzales-Mazo grabbed the victim around the throat with both hands and began strangling her as she tried to step backward…while strangling the victim, Gonzales-Mazo said, ‘your mouth is going to get you into trouble’ and asked her if she wanted ‘to die tonight’... The victim reported seeing stars before collapsing and feeling dizzy but did not pass out… Detectives later saw bruising on the front and sides of her neck.”
At one point, when the victim was on the phone with the police dispatcher, Gonzales-Mazo “drew his gun from his holster and pointed it at the floor between them as he mouthed for her to cut the call and “made a cutting motion across his neck.” LVMPD confirmed that Gonzales-Mazo no longer works for the department.
Just three months before this incident, another Las Vegas Police Officer, Michael Lyons, was arrested for “second-degree kidnapping and coercion domestic violence with threat or use of physical force.” The local NBC-affiliate reported the details of the allegation:
“The woman told LVMPD officers that she started a dating relationship with Lyons a week prior after they were previously friends for about seven years… [and] moved in with Lyons on Oct. 19, but she said she became uncomfortable when he started talking about being with another woman… [one night, when trying to leave the residence] ‘When she got to the front door, Michael grabbed her by the neck with both hands and dragged her back into the living room,’... ‘He dragged her by the neck two to three times’... Lyons also smashed her phone as they argued and he held on to her several times to keep her from leaving before she was able to break free and drive away. She said she drove away and noticed another car following her. She said Lyons blocked her car at an intersection and approached her. She then drove around his truck and continued until she got the attention of a bystander in another car, asking them to call police.”
Lyons, who was assigned to the department’s community policing division of all places, was put on paid leave.
Protect and Serve scoured the Las Vegas Police Department’s website to find its officer involved domestic violence policy to understand questions like: What happens to the officer’s department issued gun while the officer is under investigation? Is the officer put on paid leave, unpaid leave, or allowed to remain on the force? If the officer is allowed to remain on the force, are they permitted to respond to domestic violence calls for service?
Unfortunately, our search came up empty.
The International Association of Chiefs of Police issued a model policy for domestic violence committed by police officers, and similarly sized departments around the country have policies in place (for example, the Miami-Dade Police Department and the Nassau County Police Department). So, we assumed that the Las Vegas Police Department simply failed to post its policy online or some intern accidently deleted it.
So, Protect and Serve filed a public information request for “any and all written policies pertaining to allegations of domestic violence made against police officers.” What we learned is that while there is a policy for giving officers who experience domestic violence “paid or unpaid leave up to 160 hours in a 12-month period immediately following the act of violence for the purpose of seeking treatment, counseling, alternative housing, court proceedings”, and there is also a vague protocol for officers who violate the law—there is no specific policy for how to handle officers alleged to have committed an act of domestic violence:
Given that much smaller departments—like the Omaha Police Department, one-third the size of LVMPD—manage to produce detailed officer-involved domestic violence policies, there’s really no excuse for the LVMPD not to have one.
3. Police Union Bosses Behaving Badly:
“Former Vice Chairman of D.C. Police Union pleads guilty to time and attendance fraud.” For the Washington Times, Brad Matthews reports:
“Medgar Webster Sr., a former MPD officer and the former Vice Chairman of the D.C. Police Union, worked 1,400 hours at three D.C. Whole Foods stores between January 2021 and April 2022 while on the force … 514 of those 1,400 hours were double-billed; Webster submitted them as MPD regular, holiday, and overtime hours funded by taxpayers, even though he was working at Whole Foods for the duration … All in all, Webster stole $33,845 from the Metropolitan Police Department through filing for fake time worked.”
“Former Mass. State Police union boss Dana Pullman sentenced to 2.5 years in prison over kickback schemes.” For the Boston Globe, Shelley Murphy reports:
“The former leader of the Massachusetts State Police union was sentenced Wednesday to 2.5 years in prison on a litany of charges for running the bargaining unit like a racketeering enterprise and taking kickbacks from a union lobbyist. Dana Pullman, 61, of Worcester, former president of the State Police Association of Massachusetts, was also ordered to pay restitution of nearly $40,000 and $15,000 in unpaid taxes. Pullman was found guilty of taking kickbacks totaling $41,250 from Lynch, a union lobbyist, and diverting thousands of dollars from the union for personal expenses, including flowers, gifts, a Miami Beach vacation, and meals at upscale restaurants with a girlfriend.”
“The ‘political assassination’ of Santa Clara Councilman Anthony Becker.” For the Santa Clara Spotlight, Ramona Giwargis reports:
“Forty eight hours after Santa Clara’s city attorney confidentially emailed a critical grand jury report to councilmembers, the city’s politically-charged police union launched a damning website blasting the city’s top leaders. The site revealed the confidential report’s name, full paragraphs with incriminating details and photos of five councilmembers criticized in the report—including Anthony Becker, who was running against Mayor Lisa Gillmor, the favored candidate of the Santa Clara Police Officers’ Association. The union’s political action committee spent tens of thousands of dollars to defeat Becker and secure Gillmor’s narrow reelection in 2022. The website was the first blow. The police union doubled down by swiftly launching social media attack ads and sending mailers to tank Becker’s campaign—with the searing grand jury report at the center…. ‘This feels like a political assassination,’ Santa Clara Vice Mayor Kevin Park told San José Spotlight. ‘How did the (police union) get this information? Why did they register a website? None of these things are being investigated and that’s the bigger problem for me.’”