GALO: Since your retirement, have you received any indication from the current officers at El Mirage that the relationship between the El Mirage Police Department and the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office has improved at all?

BL: Actually, the opposite of that [is true]. I heard from guys that there is still a lot of negativity. He still considers the El Mirage Police Department to be his enemy. There is no cooperation is what I’m told. Of course, I don’t work there anymore. I’ve been gone for a-year-and-a-half-now, but I still have friends there and I still care a lot about the El Mirage Police Department. I spent a lot of time rebuilding that place. I do care and I do keep my thumb on the pulse of what goes on out there. I do hear that he still considers El Mirage to be his political enemy, which is a shame. You shouldn’t have any law enforcement agency being an enemy.

GALO: Beyond removing Sheriff Arpaio from his current position, are there still steps that need to be taken to make amends with those who have been denied justice?

BL: The short answer is yes. Are you talking about the victims I’m aware of in my book?

GALO: Yes.

BL: I think that there are things that need to be done. And from what I hear — the jury is still out on this –the current county attorney Bill Montgomery is looking into a lot of these cases. If [Sheriff Arpaio] was smart, he would be looking into these cases himself. The smartest thing that Arpaio could do right now, would be to re-review every one of these cases for himself. But I don’t know if he’s that smart. If he would listen to his advisors, maybe that’s what he would be doing.

I don’t know how much you know about sex crimes, but they are very delicate crimes. All aspects of sex crimes are very difficult to investigate. They are very difficult to prosecute. Here’s the reason why: it’s an embarrassing crime for women. About 96 percent [of the victims] are women and girls. It’s an embarrassment. It’s traumatic for them emotionally and physically. Most of the time, victims of sexual assault and sex crimes want to block it out of their mind; they want to put it in their past and move on with their lives. You read the book, so you know that about 50 percent of sexual crimes don’t even get reported for all the reasons I cited in the book — they don’t want to go to court; they don’t want their personal lives exposed. Those that do get reported, like the cases in my book and the other cases that he never followed up on, it’s not surprising to me that the victims didn’t holler “foul” when the detectives didn’t call them back, and when the detectives didn’t follow up like they were supposed to.

Lots of people ask me why the victims didn’t come forward. “Why are you writing a book? Why didn’t they do this instead of you doing this?” Well, because they won’t. Deep down, subconsciously, sex crimes victims just want it to go away. There’s a bit of relief sometimes for these victims when the cops don’t call them back, like in these cases where the sheriff did not call them back. It’s wrong. I’m not condoning it. And it’s horrible. But that is why sex crime investigators know that you have to work it immediately. It’s not something you put on the backburner because, as time goes on, emotional things set in with victims, psychological things set in with victims. You’ve got to prosecute, you’ve got to arrest, and you’ve got to do your forensic interviews immediately, before all the transformation and healing starts taking place. It’s a difficult thing to investigate for these victims, and if you contacted the victims today, I would guess that the majority of them would say, “Leave me alone. This happened five or seven years ago. I want to move on with my life. Leave me alone.” It wouldn’t surprise me to hear that from the majority of these victims.

GALO: Since completing the book, has anyone from other counties around the country come forward with concerns about their own law enforcement agency?

BL: Actually, I have received a lot of contact from people around the country. I guess, I shouldn’t say a lot. I have gotten more contact from people around the country than I thought I would. I was contacted by two police chiefs in California who said they were inspired by what we did in El Mirage and that they are going to be changing their procedures to ensure this kind of stuff would not happen in their jurisdiction. I was contacted by a police department in Virginia, asking me about the book and some of the positive things that came out of this. Victims’ advocate associations contacted me. And media people, of course. Some counselors have contacted me about the book. I got more responses than I thought I would from a variety of different people.

GALO: So, the majority of these contacts seem like they are trying to prevent this sort of thing from happening in their own communities.

BL: Exactly. They thought [the book] offered good explanations and insight about what things to watch for in their own departments, their own jurisdictions.

GALO: Would you encourage other officers to write exposés about the wrongs that they see in their own local law enforcement agencies?

BL: I would, but they won’t. The nature of the beast is that most law enforcement guys are not going to do what I did while they are still working for a variety of reasons. You could very easily become blacklisted in your organization. That’s the same reason why I didn’t write this book while I was still working at El Mirage. It’s what we call professional courtesy. My boss told me not to expose it at the time, not to give it out to the media unless they asked for it. And I didn’t. I followed my boss’ orders. I never said anything to the media; they found out on their own. Here’s the thing — I’m one of these guys who has always believed in open government. All of the files, all of the records, everything [the government] does should be subject to public scrutiny. This got me in trouble a few times when I was still working because I would give up things when legally requested to do so. For example, when the media would submit a Freedom of Information/Public Records request to me for something controversial, I would give it to them. And sometimes, my bosses, city managers and so forth, did not like that I gave the information up. Well, number one, it’s the law that says I will give it up because we are the government and we are supposed to be open. And [the] second part is [that] I just believe that. I have a little different perspective on things than most cops, probably. But I just believe we should be open, and I believed that when I was working.

“If There Were Any Victims…” was published by Reality Writing and is available online at Amazon.com or at www.iftherewereanyvictims.com.

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