Click to enlarge Lieutenant Brian Thatcher Screenshot from AZ Law Enforcement Training In October 2016, a woman met with a Phoenix police lieutenant to report sexual assault. She was held against her will by her boyfriend at the time, she told him. There was evidence of this at home. But Lieutenant Brian Thatcher interrupted their conversation. He did not believe a crime had been committed, he told her, and he would not collect any evidence. The woman, whose name New Times withheld for privacy reasons, was concerned but not surprised: the man she accused was Thatcher’s colleague, Phoenix Sergeant Leroy Potter. Related Stories I Support Local Community Journalism Support the independent voice of Phoenix and help keep the future of the New Times clear. In 2016, Phoenix police quietly dealt with the incident. The woman filed a lawsuit against the city, but the final settlement was kept under wraps. Internally, Thatcher was given a 15-day ban, but the incidents were not reported to the state. Nor was Thatcher put on a Brady list that prosecutors sometimes arbitrarily use to keep tabs on officials with credibility issues. Instead, Thatcher is now one of the highest-paid lieutenants in the force and vice president of Phoenix’s Sergeants and Lieutenants’ Union. Potter, meanwhile, withdrew as a result of the allegations with no further effect. But Thatcher could face even more severe punishment because of the incident, the Phoenix New Times has learned. The Arizona Peace Officer Standards and Training Board, which can revoke law enforcement certifications from officials, has reopened its case. According to emails from the New Times, Arizona POST assistant director Ben Henry began dealing with Thatcher in March of this year – apparently after stumbling across a single text message from 2017 that was the bare bones of the allegations Woman against the officers. He sent a link to the Phoenix Police Department asking the department to investigate the incident themselves. “There were concerns about him on a previous project,” a POST official wrote to Henry in another email. “Copy,” he replied. The chamber’s record of the case, received by the New Times after the trial began in June, came to some damning conclusions. In her lawsuit against the City of Phoenix, the woman alleged that Potter, who had worked as a Phoenix police officer for more than two decades, had sexually assaulted her several times. He said she was handcuffed for several hours while she cried; he had misplaced the key and had been forced to cut out her handcuffs with a bolt cutter. According to AZPOST case notes, Ms. Thatcher told Thatcher all these days after the incident and asked him to investigate his colleague. Their first conversation was recorded; Partial minutes appear in Thatcher’s case file. As they spoke, Ms. Thatcher said a dozen times that she had been “held against her will” and raped. There was evidence, she said: The handcuffs were still on the property, she said, as was an audio recorder she thought had recorded the incident. “[Potter] drinks a lot, okay? “She said.” I want him to be charged. “During their conversation, Thatcher refused to collect evidence at the scene (” No ma’am, “he said to her) and kept denying that the attacks were not consensual. “I don’t think there is sufficient basis to believe that a crime has occurred,” he said at the end of their meeting. Thatcher told his superiors that the woman had alleged no crime at all was “just annoyed,” he told a supervisor after a sergeant’s report; the sex was consensual, he said. He did not try to gather evidence. but the work of the officers was “absolutely” influenced by Thatcher’s statements, as one officer later testified: “Had the information been provided as impartially as it should have been … would have been It was easy to say, “Okay, let’s get started,” another sergeant told investigators. Ultimately, the Maricopa County Prosecutor’s Office denied charges against Potter for the attack because the likelihood of conviction was low. Potter was also never investigated internally by the Phoenix police, according to court documents, as he retired shortly after the incident. At that time, according to city records, he was still able to collect a lump-sum retirement payment of over $ 75,000 in addition to a monthly pension. (He did not respond to a request from the New Times.) An internal investigation found that Thatcher had meanwhile failed to “properly investigate” a complaint and sent him on with the brief, unpaid suspension. “It felt like it wasn’t being given the attention it deserved,” says Jody Broaddus, an attorney who represented the woman who brought the case. The final deal was kept out of the public eye as the city pushed payment so low it didn’t require city council approval, Broaddus says. (The amount was $ 7,500 for each record received from New Times, plus an undisclosed amount paid by Potter.) Confidentiality provisions included in the final agreement prevented the woman from commenting. It appeared that Thatcher would have no further ramifications for the incident. Arizona officials, and they often do, can be disqualified from prosecution for improperly investigating crimes or for dishonesty in the investigation. But only when the AZPOST board becomes aware of the misconduct. And Arizona law only requires local authorities to report violations when officers leave the force. Suspensions, meanwhile, are not subject to reporting – even if the offenses are potentially fireproof, as in Thatcher’s case. So Thatcher and the union that represents the town’s sergeants and lieutenants have been uncomfortable with the new investigation. In a statement to the New Times, Thatcher wrote that he found the process “smacked of political retribution” for his role in the union, where he advocated civil servants’ discipline. “Should AZPOST staff decide to continue cracking down on my certification,” he wrote, “I will provide information that shows that nothing I have done affects my certification as a peace officer.” He added that he would try to “To uncover the reasons why AZPOST had taken action. As for the incident at hand? It “could have been handled better,” Thatcher admitted. Union president Ben Leuschner wrote in an email to the New Times that the investigation was “fundamentally unfair.” “Given the time it has passed since the first case.” Without some sort of outright neglect or investigative misconduct by a police agency, “he said, it was inappropriate for AZPOST to step in. But the Phoenix Police Department has long been under pressure to share more incidents of misconduct at AZPOST that go beyond the prescribed level – precisely because the officials have remained on duty despite serious allegations of misconduct to the state, although the details of the new policy are still unclear. According to police spokeswoman Ann Justus has The department did so: of eleven cases sent to AZPOST for review in 2021, it told the New Times in an email, only five were required by law – a trend confirmed by Matt Giordano, AZPOST’s executive director Politicians have suffered a setback among the Phoenix police officers. Leuschner wrote that this resulted in the “arming of AZPOST.” for political purposes “. Giordano disagrees. “When we are made aware of possible wrongdoing,” he wrote in an email to the New Times, “we are committed to the community we serve.” Hold officers accountable. ”
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