Dallas Morning News
DALLAS — The Dallas Police Department is trying to determine if more than 2,000 family violence cases stored haphazardly in the garage of one of its 35-year veterans were handled properly.
Family violence advocates, prosecutors and police are worried that some of Detective Mickey East’s cases may not have been properly filed with the district attorney’s office. Officials are reviewing department policies to determine what rules may have been violated, including ones that require detectives to keep evidence in its proper place.
East said he had taken the documents home to organize them and put files together.
“I made a mistake,” he told The Dallas Morning News. Attempts by The Associated Press to reach East on Saturday were not immediately successful.
He has been temporarily assigned to the police auto pound.
Dallas police say it could take weeks, if not months, to sort through the unorganized mound of police records.
“I don’t think he had a system,” said Deputy Chief Mike Genovesi, commander of the special investigations division, who called East’s record-keeping technique “grossly inadequate.”
Two weeks ago an audit of an internal tracking database at the Police Department’s family violence unit discovered problems with East’s files.
East, who has been assigned to the family violence unit since 2005, had entered about 10 of his cases into the system. Officials then asked to look at his case files, which he told them that he kept at home. East then brought in a dozen large boxes, some of them labeled by year, that were filled to the brim with police records.
Detectives and supervisors have spent hours sorting through the records in a conference room at police headquarters .
“Given the state of the files, it’s hard to believe that, considering the way they were maintained, that they were all taken care of,” Genovesi said.
Dallas County First District Attorney Terri Moore, top assistant to District Attorney Craig Watkins, said prosecutors would wait until the Police Department completes its internal review before deciding how to proceed.
“We think there will be a spike in family violence cases once they finish their investigation,” Moore said. “They’re going to be filing a lot of cases with us that we think he had not filed.”
Paige Flink, executive director of the Family Place shelter, said she’s concerned for police detectives “who work very hard for victims” and the victims themselves who may have suffered because cases were not filed properly.
“It’s hard for victims to come forward because of all the shame and fear or the abuser saying that nobody’s going to believe you,” she said. “When she’s done her part and made the call, and then that follow-through doesn’t happen, it’s disheartening.”
Copyright 2009 Dallas Morning News