Working with cold case police detectives and investigators can be a difficult relationship to manage for the homicide or sexual assault victim family and the investigator.  For example, an estimated cold case homicide load for a Phoenix Police detective could be around 300:1 for case assignments.  Families have a hard enough time staying up with one case let alone 300.  Additionally, not enough cases are solved and new ones at a rate of 50% of new homicides are added to the cold case listing each year.  However, managing the relationship between investigator and family or sexual assault victim needs to be a constructive one not one where the officer wants the family to go away.

Annual meetings between families, sex assault victims, and investigators or case representatives would be good.  However, that does not seem available.  As a result a lack of communication ends up in head butting, finger pointing, and incomplete communications.  Frustrations mount.

Statutes state clearly the right of the family to have access to investigative reports and newer additional reports as state in ARS 13-4405 (i).  The reports should be free per ARS 39-127 .

However, comments are coming through that police are stating that victim families are interfering with investigations or hindering investigations.  Without knowing the specifics, those statements need review to understand accurately what the police are saying.  If you have received such a comment, send a copy of the comment or email it to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it Research needs to be done on those police policy claims and posted for victim family and representative information.

With assistance and guidance the following sections of Arizona Revised Statutes were found in ARS Title 13 about hindering an investigation:

ARS 13-2510, (Hindering Prosecution; definition)
ARS 13-2511, (Hindering prosecution in the second degree; classification)
ARS 13-2512 (Hindering prosecution in the first degree;classification); and 
ARS 13-2409 (Obstructing a criminal investigation or prosecution)

(Click on the highlighted section for the internet to take you to the Arizona Revised Statues section cited.)

Quite frankly, it would be nice if these laws were enforced on people abetting killers and rapists.  It would be frustrating to discover that these statutes were being used on victim families who are honestly trying to bring someone to justice.

Many of us already know the frustration of cooperating with Silent Witness and the lack of a feedback loop with that system.  You can distribute all the flyers you want, which actually is a good thing, but you won't get any information back about the impact, good or bad, from the distribution effort.  The law, ordinance, or policy that confines that information from a family is not identified as of yet.  When or if it is, the citation will be posted.

Some investigators are reluctant to provide information from reports or other sources for fear of two conditions being created:

• gang members will develop lists of people to intimidate from the police reports themselves and
• perpetrators of cold homicides or felony sexual assaults might be cued to specific information to destroy evidence.

"Redacting" or "sanitizing" a police investigation or report was intended just to avoid those two conditions.  Hopefully, modifications in the law in the future will assist families involved in cold cases to such information to further assist police investigators to speed an investigation to a conclusion.  The goal of this information is to better concert the efforts and concerns of victim families and cold case investigators into an efficient investigative effort.