ASUPD’s shoddy rape investigation costs ASU several million dollars.

This just further highlight’s ASUPD’s mistreatment of women. An old article, but worth mentioning:

A former Arizona State student claims that “ASU refused to authorize either a drug screen [or] rape kit for DNA analysis” and “obstructed and shut down the investigation” after she was drugged and sodomized at a Sigma Chi fraternity party. She claims campus police did not interview a single Sigma Chi member, blamed her for “having been forcibly sodomized,” and did it all “to make ASU appear safer than it was.”
   The woman claims that ASU police officers conducted a shoddy, halfhearted investigation to minimize the university’s liability. The woman sued the Arizona Board of Regents in Maricopa County Court, claiming the university violated Title IX by failing to fully investigate her claims.
She claims that ASU knew of “the risk of severe sexual harassment, including sexual assault, of female students at the Sigma Chi house on its campus,” but that ASU sought to use “pressure or policy to minimize sexual assault reports to make ASU appear safer than it was.”
The plaintiff, a former member of Pi Beta Phi sorority, says she went to a toga party thrown by members of Sigma Chi, where she was given alcohol. She was 19 at the time. At the party, she says, Matt Potter, a Sigma Chi member, gave her a drink “that had been spiked with a drug designed to incapacitate her and impair her memory.” She says her memory of the night was impaired by the drink, and that she woke up the next day at the Sigma Chi house with severe rectal pain, without her purse and some of her clothing.
She says two friends and the president of the ASU Panhellenic Council took her to Tempe St. Luke’s Hospital, where a sexual assault examination determined that she had been “sodomized with significant ‘anal injury’ with rectal and vaginal pain, bloody stool, and exposure to bodily fluids.”
She says that despite her injuries and a request from the emergency room physician, ASU police officers refused to authorize a rape kit, drug screen, or a SANE (Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner) examination. She says the officers blamed her for “having been forcibly sodomized.”
She claims that “the reason [ASU] Officer Janda would not conduct a proper investigation of [her] sodomy and sexual assault because she had consumed alcoholic beverages before the assault, was a pretext to minimize ASU’s liability.”
After she was released from the hospital, she says, her sister drove her to Tucson, where she was examined by a physician at Northwest Medical Center Hospital and was found to be a “crime victim” of “sexual assault.” By that time, she says, it was too late to perform a drug screen or rape kit.

ASU’s Office of Student Life, Judicial Affairs interviewed her once, and interviewed only one of her sorority sisters for its investigation, she says. “No Sigma Chi members were ever questioned,” and ASU closed the investigation less than 2 months after the rape, according to the 21-page complaint.”ASU has in recent years systematically and severely underreported sexual assault reports,” the complaint states. “For 2008, ASU reported and posted only four forcible sexual assault reports in its 2009 Annual Security Reports, despite, on information and belief, having received at least several dozen reports. On information and belief, the motivations of ASU police for refusing to investigate [the plaintiff’s] rape and sodomy included ASU’s pressure or policy to minimize sexual assault reports to make ASU appear safer than it was.”
ASU is required by the Clery Act “to report to the U.S. Department of Education, and to post publicly, all reports of sexual assaults made to campus police or its Judicial Affairs or other personnel,” according to the complaint. But ASU never reported her rape and sodomy in its Annual Security Report, she says. And she says the school took no action against Gallagher or Potter or Sigma

This lawsuit alone cause ASU several million dollars due to horrible policies and horrible policing. Yet this officer is still working at ASU and is allowed to train new officers?!

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11 thoughts on “ASUPD’s shoddy rape investigation costs ASU several million dollars.

  1. QuickCallTempe! says:

    The ASUPD department has a long history of minimizing rape allegations based on the standard the county attorney will prosecute on. I never understood this. It’s not our job to decide what the county attorney will prosecute on, but when you are used to being above it all as a clique member you get to decide these things. Any other officer would have had their ass fired over a 3 million dollar judgment.

    Like everything else our department does what it wants to do instead of what it should do. The department is used to people not making complaints or filing law suits. Let’s face it; the stakes aren’t very high at a security guard department masquerading as a police department. The university is used to paying law suits to keep people quiet and out of court.

    Here politics, ego, and attitude trump competence and ability, how else can we operate with a staffing crisis year after year and command just recently started giving a shit about it? When you bump all your little minions up with pay raise and promotion after promotion you forget you need people to patrol the campus, oops.

    We see plenty of false allegations on sexual assaults, cases where alcohol is involved, stories involving bad judgment, but to completely blow of your responsibilities as an officer to a legitimate victim of such a heinous crime, that’s unforgiveable.

    It’s our job to investigate, determine if a crime was committed, and handle the case accordingly. In this case, to not interview multiple suspects, to not do your job, and to blow off something like this is crazy. Was Janda in a hurry to go chase traffic stops, MIP’s, MIC’s, dopers, or bike thieves? Probably. We get sued for three million dollars, but I would bet the farm he still got an above average evaluation score for the year, a four, five?

  2. Justanotherdispensible50 says:

    When you have a group of people in law enforcement telling lie after lie and nobody knowing any better it sets a dangerous precedent. We operate on the basis of public trust.

    Unfortunately we have some talented liars who know how to explain away everything. Collectively they are furthering the duration of the problem and endangering lives in the process. The university is a business, higher stats are bad for business, so we lie about stats, work around Clery, and pay out on lawsuits when bad things happen. The hush orders come with the payments and nobody knows any better.

  3. ASUPDsmokeNmirrors says:

    Absolutely disgusting. In summary ASUPD cares more about catching bike thieves than girls getting anal raped by fraternities. They say rape is about power and not sex. The command at ASUPD probably felt a kinship with the frat and asked them to tone it down, just like their ass grabbing assistant chiefs.

    This is what happens when the University police department is ran by people who only worked at University police departments. A leader of city cops, would have been knee deep in the frat kicking the shit out of those scumbags and sending the criminals to prison. They would have fired the cop responsible for the willful dereliction of their duty, and justice would have been done.

    I would love to see the police report and see how this was skirted around and ignored. Yes, Quickcalltempe, I bet he did get a high review on his eval for this year because he’s a part of the firearms country club who can never do any wrong.

  4. Thinblueline1 says:

    If this was done by anyone other than a protected member of the department without a doubt they would have been fired. In comparison Rudy was hounded,fired for nothing and he didn’t cost the University a cent, a very different standard from one person to the next. This is a major reason why the majority of officers don’t want to work here. We all talk to each other, we learn about one another’s IA’s and how goofy they are. How are we not supposed to think this is a retention plan?

  5. OnefootoutCYA says:

    It’s by dumb luck alone that we haven’t been sued more than we have. The fact is most people don’t lawyer up, don’t know their rights, and we dodge the bullet, except for Janda’s 3 million dollar one here.

  6. WheresMy907 says:

    I can’t believe Janda wrote this up on a 7 and didn’t interview suspects. It’s a gang rape!?! Most of our people did more of an investigation for petty thefts. Damn. Three million greenbacks, ASUPD could have retained a lot of cops with that money.

  7. […] have very briefly scratched the surface of issues (in previous posts here and here) regarding ASU’s compliance with the Clery Act. We’ve looked at specific cases […]

  8. […] violence cases ensure cases are appropriately handled, and is more cost-effective than dealing with civil lawsuits or wasting tax payer dollars by writing a fancy […]

  9. […] he does not work at ASUPD anymore! What about the lack of an appropriate punishment for an officer who majorly mishandled a sexual assault case, and who was later allowed to train several NEW employees? Or the chronic underreporting and […]

  10. […] all, why would students be willing to trust the PD when the Command Staff has turned a blind eye to properly investigating and reporting sexual […]

  11. […] This email uses lots of broad, empty language to discuss ASU’s “plan” to deal with sexual abuse/sexual assault, in order to prevent a repeat of last years sex assault explosion. Noticeably absent is the direct inclusion of ASU’s own police department in ANY stage of the planning or implementation process, save for the tidbit where the university will assist a victim of sexual abuse or assault with filing a police department (whether or not your criminal complaint will be handled appropriately by ASUPD is an entirely separat…n). […]

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