AllyRose
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New Orleans Sex Crimes Investigations
Report of Inquiry
New Orleans (CNN) -- The report is full of harrowing details alleging that five New Orleans Police Department detectives in the special victims unit may have failed to investigate sex crimes over a three-year period.
But one case stands out.
According to the seven-page document released Wednesday by the city's Office of Inspector General, a 2-year-old was brought to a hospital emergency room after an alleged sexual assault. Tests would show the toddler had a sexually transmitted disease, the report said. The detective in the case, who worked in the child abuse unit, wrote in his report that the 2-year-old "did not disclose any information that would warrant a criminal investigation and closed the case," the inspector general's report said.
The detective -- identified as Akron Davis by the New Orleans Police Department after the report was released -- is one of five officers whose reports were examined in the investigation. Only nine detectives worked in the special victims unit during the period that was investigated. The inspector general's findings indicate "there was no effective supervision of these five detectives over a three-year period. Nor could there have been any effective supervision of the supervisors, or any review of the outcome of the cases assigned to these five detectives."
Another portion of the report homes in on Det. Damita Williams of the sex crimes unit, who, according to the investigation, was given 11 simple rape cases over the three-year period.
Simple rape is defined as an assault in which the perpetrator rapes a victim that the perpetrator knows is incapable of resisting or understanding what's happening because the victim is in a stupor, intoxicated or "through unsoundness of mind" is temporarily or permanently incapable of understanding the nature of the act.
Of those 11, five had no supplemental reports, one had no file at all and one was taken to prosecutors, the inspector general's report said.
"(Damita Williams) told at least three different individuals that (she) did not believe that simple rape should be a crime," it said. A 20-year veteran, she had been with the NOPD the longest of the five detectives under investigation, Harrison said in a statement.
Among the other allegations in the report:
-- A victim told Det. Vernon Haynes of the sex crimes unit she was sexually assaulted and robbed of her iPhone, but there is no documentation indicating police tracked the phone;
-- A victim told a nurse before a sexual assault exam that she was receiving threatening text messages from her assailant, but there is no documentation showing Det. Damita Williams tried to obtain phone records. The detective also never submitted the rape kit to the Louisiana State Police DNA Laboratory because, she wrote, "the sex was consensual";
-- Det. Davis was assigned two cases in which infants were taken to the emergency room with skull fractures. In one case, a nurse suspected "non-accidental trauma," but Davis did not investigate. In the other case, a doctor found a previous skull fracture, and the infant's mother gave conflicting accounts of what happened, but Davis determined there was "no cause for criminal action."
-- Davis was given 13 total cases, including the aforementioned, in which potential juvenile victims of sexual or physical abuse were still in the home where the abuse occurred. Eleven of those cases had no documents showing "any investigative effort beyond the initial report."
-- Haynes was given three cases in which the state laboratory identified DNA evidence, but there are no documents indicating a follow-up investigation.
-- In 2013, the inspector general requested supplemental reports missing from case files belonging to Det. Merrell Merricks of the sex crimes unit -- three from 2011 and one from 2010 -- but after the reports were submitted, investigators learned all four reports "were created on the same day in 2013, shortly after NOPD received the OIG request for the missing reports." Investigators determined the same thing happened with a 2010 and 2011 report missing from Derrick Williams' files; The last example was "perhaps the most egregious," Quatrevaux said.
"The auditors point out that they didn't have certain case files and asked the NOPD to send it to them," he said. "We got the cases a few days later, but when we checked with the (NOPD information technology) department we found that those records were post-dated two and three years. ... They were created when we made the request."
Report of Inquiry
New Orleans (CNN) -- The report is full of harrowing details alleging that five New Orleans Police Department detectives in the special victims unit may have failed to investigate sex crimes over a three-year period.
But one case stands out.
According to the seven-page document released Wednesday by the city's Office of Inspector General, a 2-year-old was brought to a hospital emergency room after an alleged sexual assault. Tests would show the toddler had a sexually transmitted disease, the report said. The detective in the case, who worked in the child abuse unit, wrote in his report that the 2-year-old "did not disclose any information that would warrant a criminal investigation and closed the case," the inspector general's report said.
The detective -- identified as Akron Davis by the New Orleans Police Department after the report was released -- is one of five officers whose reports were examined in the investigation. Only nine detectives worked in the special victims unit during the period that was investigated. The inspector general's findings indicate "there was no effective supervision of these five detectives over a three-year period. Nor could there have been any effective supervision of the supervisors, or any review of the outcome of the cases assigned to these five detectives."
Another portion of the report homes in on Det. Damita Williams of the sex crimes unit, who, according to the investigation, was given 11 simple rape cases over the three-year period.
Simple rape is defined as an assault in which the perpetrator rapes a victim that the perpetrator knows is incapable of resisting or understanding what's happening because the victim is in a stupor, intoxicated or "through unsoundness of mind" is temporarily or permanently incapable of understanding the nature of the act.
Of those 11, five had no supplemental reports, one had no file at all and one was taken to prosecutors, the inspector general's report said.
"(Damita Williams) told at least three different individuals that (she) did not believe that simple rape should be a crime," it said. A 20-year veteran, she had been with the NOPD the longest of the five detectives under investigation, Harrison said in a statement.
Among the other allegations in the report:
-- A victim told Det. Vernon Haynes of the sex crimes unit she was sexually assaulted and robbed of her iPhone, but there is no documentation indicating police tracked the phone;
-- A victim told a nurse before a sexual assault exam that she was receiving threatening text messages from her assailant, but there is no documentation showing Det. Damita Williams tried to obtain phone records. The detective also never submitted the rape kit to the Louisiana State Police DNA Laboratory because, she wrote, "the sex was consensual";
-- Det. Davis was assigned two cases in which infants were taken to the emergency room with skull fractures. In one case, a nurse suspected "non-accidental trauma," but Davis did not investigate. In the other case, a doctor found a previous skull fracture, and the infant's mother gave conflicting accounts of what happened, but Davis determined there was "no cause for criminal action."
-- Davis was given 13 total cases, including the aforementioned, in which potential juvenile victims of sexual or physical abuse were still in the home where the abuse occurred. Eleven of those cases had no documents showing "any investigative effort beyond the initial report."
-- Haynes was given three cases in which the state laboratory identified DNA evidence, but there are no documents indicating a follow-up investigation.
-- In 2013, the inspector general requested supplemental reports missing from case files belonging to Det. Merrell Merricks of the sex crimes unit -- three from 2011 and one from 2010 -- but after the reports were submitted, investigators learned all four reports "were created on the same day in 2013, shortly after NOPD received the OIG request for the missing reports." Investigators determined the same thing happened with a 2010 and 2011 report missing from Derrick Williams' files; The last example was "perhaps the most egregious," Quatrevaux said.
"The auditors point out that they didn't have certain case files and asked the NOPD to send it to them," he said. "We got the cases a few days later, but when we checked with the (NOPD information technology) department we found that those records were post-dated two and three years. ... They were created when we made the request."
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