Advocates say police in many local communities aren't showing enough commitment to investigating sexual assaults. One place they point to is Nome, Alaska, where law enforcement has been accused of failing to investigate hundreds of assault cases.
of the police department in September. She was hired in 2004 to replace Matthew Clay Owens, the Nome police officer who was sentenced to 101 years in prison for murdering Sonya Ivanoff.
Small said that when she left the department in 2006 she wrote a letter to city council members informing them of her concerns. A police consultant interviewed her, but nothing came of her complaint, Small and Stotts told the AP. When she pointed out that it was a crime to have sex with someone who was unconscious, she recalled, they “laughed and pointed to a stack of case files.” When a victim has a history of drinking or promiscuity, they explained, the case would “never be acted upon.”
“What we know about victims is that there’s an incredible level of self-blame for all of the activity — and being vulnerable is not a crime, although in these cases it certainly is used against the victim.”Estes launched the audit of the city’s sexual assault cases in early 2019. In his first weeks as police chief, he’d heard the concerns and decided his department needed to fathom the extent of the problem.
Kennon said he didn’t think all officers were to blame. Some appeared to have done acceptable investigations. Without enough staff to cover day-to-day demands, Estes said, he was forced to pull Kennon off the cold case review for several months. “Maybe I didn’t explain it the best way I could have,” Estes said. But “it wasn’t just me explaining the problems. There were other people within the city who knew — and know — that change is needed.”
In a letter replying to the ACLU, lawyers for Nome’s insurance agency asserted that Hardy has no case, because deciding whether to investigate a criminal complaint is a “discretionary” matter. “The City of Nome is sensitive to Ms. Hardy’s situation, but disputes legal liability for the emotional distress and trauma that you describe in your letter,” the lawyers wrote.
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