STOCKTON — A civil grand jury has found that too many cold case investigations go unsolved in San Joaquin County primarily due to lack of staffing and available resources.
The San Joaquin County civil grand jury released a 27-page report on Friday and recommended that the San Joaquin County Sheriff’s Office, San Joaquin County District Attorney’s Office and Stockton Police Department find ways to hire several more detectives and investigators to strictly work on cold case files by the end of the year.
By March 2020, all law enforcement agencies also should include sexual assault and missing persons under suspicious circumstances in their definition of what is considered to be a cold case investigation.
Looking into the lack of closure from county cold cases stemmed from what the report called “an ongoing fascination” in the media and general public with high-profile, unsolved crimes. The report named one such instance as the April 2018 arrest of 72-year-old Joseph James DeAngelo, linked by DNA evidence to be the alleged prolific serial killer, rapist and burglar known as the Golden State Killer.
There are more than 500 cold case homicides in San Joaquin County, including at least 12 homicide victims whose remains never have been positively identified, according to the report. The exact number of cold case homicides is unknown due to the lack of a consistent “cold case” definition and the lack of a digitized tracking system.
The National Institute of Justice defines a cold case as “any case whose probative investigative leads have been exhausted.” However, the definition of what is considered a cold case can differ between law enforcement agencies.
The grand jury discovered that many law enforcement agencies in San Joaquin County use different definitions of what is considered a case to go cold, and some have no definition at all. One unnamed agency reported that they could not state how many cold cases they had because they “don’t have a well-defined ‘cold case’ policy.”
Stockton Police Department spokesman Officer Joe Silva said officials had just received the grand jury report and are reviewing the recommendations.
“We are currently reviewing their recommendations and will provide a response back to them,” he said Friday.
According to the report, Stockton police closed 70 percent of the city’s 33 homicide investigations last year, but approximately 10 of those cases remain unsolved. In addition, there have been no arrests or prosecutions involving cold case investigations in San Joaquin County in the past five years.
The grand jury learned that there are a significant number of cold case homicides with the Stockton Police Department and San Joaquin County Sheriff’s Office that have not been reviewed for years simply due to insufficient staffing. The challenge of hiring and retaining qualified officers has been a struggle for many agencies.
Stockton police had only 331 sworn officers in 2013 and the passage of a three-quarter cent sales tax known as Measure A provided enough funding to bring the number to uniformed Stockton police officers to 466 as of March, according to the report.
Stockton Police Chief Eric Jones said in the report that reaching the budgeted maximum of 485 sworn officers is hard due to factors such as retirements, attrition and staff leaving for other jurisdictions.
The grand jury has given the Sheriff’s Office and DA’s Office until Dec. 31 to “utilize budget options and staffing reassignments as necessary” to hire at least three full-time Sheriff’s detectives and at least two full-time District Attorney’s investigators dedicated solely to cold case investigations.
The same goes to the city of Stockton to bring in least three full-time police detectives by the end of the year.
Finally, the grand jury instructed the DA’s Office to create a cold case task force with each county law enforcement agency sign a partnership and cooperation agreement by next March.
June 2, 2019
Stockton Record
By Nicholas Filipas
No comments:
Post a Comment