The system overhaul was prompted in part because of repeated Journal inquiries into what happened to the 2011 allegation of rape by a young girl against Michael Marchese, 44, of Belen.
The girl, 12, told school counselors in October 2011 that Marchese had repeatedly raped her, but the case went nowhere. In September 2014, another girl, 13, told counselors that Marchese had been raping her for about a year.
“This incident was an eye-opener and a catalyst to really get this department moving in terms of how we embrace technology. We can’t allow things to fall through the cracks,” State Police Chief Pete Kassetas said in a phone interview last week. “It was a failure on the part of my personnel, which was compounded by systematic flaws in how we do business.”
In December, Kassetas ordered an Internal Affairs investigation into two employees and promised to look at ways to prevent cases like Marchese’s from occurring again. Last week, State Police spokeswoman Elizabeth Armijo outlined all of the changes in an email.
Both girls were in state custody in December, and Marchese was indicted in late October on 11 criminal charges, including child rape, criminal sexual contact of a minor, sexual exploitation of a minor and contributing to the delinquency of a minor.
The charges involve both alleged victims. He could spend 78 years in prison if convicted, prosecutors said.
In a State Police report, officers wrote that the 2011 allegations were compiled into a report and “forwarded to The District Attorney’s Office for review.”
Kassetas said in December that there was no evidence the case actually was turned over, and 13th Judicial District Attorney Lemuel Martinez has said his office never received the case.
Armijo declined to comment on what came of the internal investigation or whether any employees were suspended or fired. The employees were not placed on leave during the investigation and continued working in the same positions.
Since the beginning of 2015, State Police IT officials have revamped the system to ensure supervisors and officers don’t forget cases and that there are ways to ensure all of the reports are submitted to the District Attorney’s Office.
To do that, a series of email notifications and stopgaps will notify officers and various levels of the command staff about pending or dormant cases.
The changes include:
- An email notification problem was fixed to make sure that any report that remains open for three days will be flagged for attention by the originating officer and his or her supervisor. Kassetas said he doesn’t know how the problem occurred.
- The system now generates a report that is sent to all of the department’s majors for any reports that haven’t been reviewed and approved after 30 days.
- On the first of every month, the system automatically emails department captains to allow them to reconcile lists of reports that were submitted against the reports that should have been submitted.
- The department is in the process of rolling out a $3.2 million computer-aided dispatch system, which will further strengthen communication between officers and supervisors and prevent the loss of cases, the chief said.
Armijo said the log allows supervisors to track all reports from their origin. A second log, which is overseen by lieutenants, requires sergeants to update the log when they approve or reject a report, she said.
©2015 the Albuquerque Journal (Albuquerque, N.M.) Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
