The Maricopa County Attorney’s Office is working hard for you. Our prosecutors have been collaborating with law enforcement and crime analysts to share information and develop best practices to improve public safety by identifying and prosecuting crime drivers in the community and strengthening community outreach. We’re also busy assessing and improving programs to offer diversion to offenders and give them the tools they need to avoid return to the criminal justice system.
 
Our efforts are being recognized as well, with three of our programs winning awards from the National Association of Counties (NACo).
 
Our annual ‘Don’t Leave Me Behind’ Vehicular Heatstroke campaign is well underway. We, along with our partners, the Governor’s Office of Highway Safety, the Arizona Humane Society and Phoenix Children’s Hospital, urge you to help us to spread the word that ‘Not One More’ child or pet should die in a hot car.
 
Wherever your summer plans take you, make sure you take precautions to secure your home before leaving on vacation and be aware of your surroundings as you travel to avoid becoming a victim of crimes of opportunity.
 
Have a great summer!

This Summer, Let’s Work Together for
‘Not One More’ Hot Car Death

If You See A Child or Pet In A Hot Vehicle:

Arizona law protects a person’s use of reasonable force to remove a child or a household pet from a locked and unattended vehicle if the person does ALL of the following:

• Has a good faith belief there is an imminent danger of death or physical injury
• Check if the vehicle is locked and found no other reasonable way to get the child or pet out
• Call 911 BEFORE entering the vehicle
• Use no more force than necessary
• Remain at the scene until authorities arrive

As per Arizona law (ARS § 12-558.02) A person is not immune from civil liability if the person fails to abide by any of the provisions above and commits any unnecessary or malicious damage to the motor vehicle.

Warning Signs of Heatstroke in Children:

• Red, hot, and moist or dry skin
• No sweating
• Strong rapid pulse or slow weak pulse
• Throbbing headache
• Dizziness
• Unconsciousness
• Nausea
• Confusion
• Irritable or strange behavior

Warning Signs of Heatstroke in Pets:

• Red gums and tongue
• Rapid panting & pulse
• Excessive/lack of drool
• Excessive thirst
• Vomiting/diarrhea
• Glazed eyes
• Weakness/collapse
• Seizures
• Unconsciousness
• Confusion
• Irritable or strange behavior

Safety Tips:

• Never leave a child or pet alone in a parked car – even with the windows rolled down or air conditioning on.
• Always check the back of the vehicle before locking the door and walking away.
• Never let children play in an unattended vehicle.
• Always lock your vehicle doors and trunk and keep the keys out of a child’s reach. If a child is missing, quickly check all vehicles, including the trunk.
• If dropping a child off is not part of your normal routine, take steps to remind yourself that the child is in the car:
  • Place something you need to take with you in the back seat next to the car seat so that you’ll check the back seat before you leave.
  • Set a reminder on your cell phone or calendar.
  • Instruct your daycare provider to call you if your child does not show up.
• If a child or pet is in distress due to heat, get them out of the heat as quickly as possible. Cool them rapidly by spraying them with cool, not cold, water. Never use an ice bath!

Facts:

• 2018 was the deadest year on record in the U.S. for children left in hot cars.
• Since 1998, more than 800 children have died nationwide as a result of vehicular heatstroke.
  • 54% were forgotten in the vehicle.
  • 27% gained access by themselves and became trapped.
  • 18% were left intentionally.
  • 1% were unknown cases.
• High body temperatures can cause permanent injury or death.
  • Heatstroke begins when the core body temperature reaches about 104 degrees and a child’s major organs begin to shut down.
  • Heatstroke becomes fatal at a core body temperature of 107 degrees.
• Heatstroke fatalities have occurred even in vehicles parked in shaded areas and when the air temperature was 80 degrees or less.

MCAO Remembers our Veterans

On Memorial Day weekend, MCAO joined with community members and groups from across Arizona to place American flags at the headstones of our veterans buried at the National Memorial Cemetery of Arizona. This is a long-held tradition to remember and honor our fallen heroes who have made the ultimate sacrifice in service to our nation.

Three MCAO Programs Win National
Association of Counties Achievement Awards

The Maricopa County Attorney’s Office received achievement awards from the National Association of Counties (NACo) for three programs: “Stand Up to Put Downs,” Operation Double Check and our new Training and Travel app. “It is an honor to be recognized for this important work. We continue to be committed to implementing programs that positively impact our community in collaboration with others,” said County Attorney Bill Montgomery.

Stand Up to Put Downs Program
Families all over Maricopa County have read about, heard about or experienced bullying in school, at home and in the community. Bullying is well-defined and as members of the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office Community Affairs team discovered, despite all the available resources, there was still a gap in the type of information being shared. “Stand Up to Put Downs” helps families, educators and students work together to not only help stop bullying but understand better the legal and social implications. The program provides parents and educators with a unique perspective on the consequences of bullying and is divided into three distinct categories, each one presented by an expert. Part 1 is an overview and introduction of bullying by the MCAO Community Affairs Team. Part 2 is a detailed look at how law enforcement investigates bullying claims, how juvenile crimes differ from adult crimes, bullying-related offenses that can be reported to law enforcement and actions to take with law enforcement if parents/teachers/students experience or witness bullying. Part 3 is an overview of how the juvenile justice system works presented by long-time MCAO prosecutors.

Operation Double Check
If a defendant commits certain sex offenses in Arizona, the consequences of a conviction can last the rest of their life. Sex offenders must register with the state so that law enforcement knows where these offenders are if they aren’t incarcerated. A team within the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office Special Victims Division created Operation Double Check to confirm home addresses of these sex offenders, especially if they re-offend and prepare to make another prosecution journey through the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office.

The program was created because many convicted sex offenders were putting false information on their registration paperwork and in some cases the offenders were claiming to be transient to avoid providing a permanent address.

Operation Double Check allows the MCAO to have access to the Arizona Department of Public Safety (DPS) sex offender registration database to confirm these addresses and match them up to what were previously listed as “transient” addresses in the MCAO case management system. With this access to the DPS database, MCAO staff can go through our case tracking system and flag those offenders required to register as sex offenders.
 
Training and Travel App
With nearly 1,000 employees, the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office has a busy Administration Department handling everything from payroll, to RICO money to grants, the overall Office budget and all requests from employees to attend training and related travel required for employee trips to conferences, required certification and prosecution-related tasks. Prior to July 2017, all training and travel requests from employees were completed on multiple pieces of different-colored paper. Starting in August 2017, this all changed. Paper requests for training and travel were discontinued and an improved use of technology helped make this process electronic. With most of the Office now using tablets and smartphones, the MCAO Administration and Information Technology teams were convinced that an electronic solution could be created. A new digital travel and training app was created featuring easy functionality and providing the ability to make these requests electronically, tracking each request through each of the approval steps and generating a completed and signed form back to the requesting employee in record time.
 

The NACo Achievement Awards were started in 1970 to recognize innovative and effective county government programs that enhance services for residents. MCAO has earned 74 NACo Awards since 1990, 20 since 2011 under County Attorney Bill Montgomery.

Civil Division Serving MCAO and the County

County Attorney Receives the
ChildHelp ‘Champion for Children’ Founder’s Award

Information Focused Prosecution Work
at the MCAO Going Strong 

In May, nearly 60 attendees from law enforcement agencies and prosecutor’s office across Maricopa County converged downtown at the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office to participate in the inaugural Information Focused Prosecution (IFP) Seminar. Analysts, officers and prosecutors attended the free two-hour seminar, a collaborative effort that featured presenters from different criminal justice agencies. Josh Maxwell, a prosecutor in the MCAO Repeat Offender Bureau joined Maryann McKessy, Community Based Prosecution Bureau Chief and Phoenix Police Officer Ethan Coffey as they discussed “Effectively Prosecuting Crime Drivers.” These experts discussed repeat offenders and crime drivers and how close coordination between prosecutors and law enforcement coupled with strong community outreach can have a measurable impact. “IFP is designed to increase information sharing and collaboration with community partners to reduce crime and make our communities safer,” stated Micah Gaudet, Director of Crime Strategies at the MCAO. “Our efforts to reduce crime and make communities safer is dependent on the good partnerships MCAO enjoys with local law enforcement and the community. Our goal is for these seminars to be engaging and motivate us to work toward reducing crime and making our communities safer.” Overwhelmingly positive feedback from attendees confirmed that more IFP related topics and presenters will be planned over the next several months.
 
Also in May, two long-time crime analysts in the Valley, Margarita Encinas with the Chandler Police Department and Tobie Sanderson of the Mesa Police Department met with the prosecutors in the MCAO Sex Crimes Bureaus and presented information on two unique reports, the Adult/Child Contacts Report (Mesa) and the Special Victim Contacts Report (Chandler). These reports, developed at each agency solely to assist with apprehending previously undetected sex offenders, provide prosecutors with analyses on information coming from tools like computer aided dispatch (CAD) calls. “These reports continue to help detect hard to find sex offenders,” said Margarita Encinas. “We want to be able to assist in serving justice at a level that complements police work and helps not only catch the bad guys, but successfully prosecute them.”

MCAO Carries the Torch for Special Olympics

On May 3, County Attorney Bill Montgomery and members of MCAO staff ran in the Arizona Law Enforcement Torch Run for Special Olympics.
 
MCAO employees raised money for the Arizona Law Enforcement Torch Run for Special Olympics through casual day donations. Those who hit the streets to participate in the MCAO leg of the torch run also helped to raise awareness for Special Olympics and its programs.

Measuring Success:
Diversion Programs Offer A New Path

Prosecution-led diversion is not a new concept at the Maricopa County Attorney‘s Office, but over the past year the Diversion Program Bureau has been working to establish diversion as a key option for prosecutors to achieve justice outside of the traditional courtroom prosecution model.
 
“Diversion programs offer our prosecutors another option to help seek justice and reduce recidivism,” said Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery. “Our success is measured by seeking justice for victims and our community and reducing recidivism. Diversion or deferred prosecution programs provide eligible offenders with an opportunity to stay in their communities while learning the necessary skills or getting the help they need to stop the cycle that may cause them to reoffend in the future.”
 
Created in Spring of 2018, the Diversion Program Bureau was established to exclusively focus on the development, performance and sustainability of prosecution-led diversion programs. The bureau is led not by prosecutors but by staff with extensive professional backgrounds in human services, specializing in serving the justice-involved population.
 
“Sometimes ensuring justice in a case requires us to think outside of the box and look beyond simply seeking a conviction,” said Patricia Cordova, MCAO Diversion Program Bureau Chief.
 
Diversion programs allow prosecutors to divert certain felony cases into education and treatment programs that address the offender’s thinking patterns and decisions as well as issues associated with substance abuse that led to their criminal behavior. These programs hold the individual accountable and provide strategies and community support for positive change. If the offender successfully completes the diversion program, charges will not be filed, or if they were already filed, they will be dismissed. If the offender is unsuccessful, they will return to traditional prosecution through the courts.
 
With one year of successes and learning under their belts, the bureau is concentrating efforts in three main areas: assessing program outcomes, engaging in continuous program improvement and evaluating the need for future diversion program types. Each of these areas centers on reducing recidivism – the primary goal for diversion programs.
 
“Contracted service providers must apply researched-informed practices in the delivery of each diversion program to achieve favorable outcomes for offenders and the public. Monitoring and measuring these outcomes is essential in determining the impact of these programs,” said Cordova.
 
That mission is at the heart of a training conference for contracted diversion program providers that MCAO will be hosting at the end of June. About 30 service providers’ staff will be in attendance to ensure they are all using the same uniform assessment tool, the Ohio Risk Assessment System (ORAS). The tool will ensure that all diversion program providers evaluate crimogenic factors in the same way and report findings both at the beginning of treatment and again before successful completion of a program. This uniform data collection will then give the bureau the ability to ensure treatment is being successfully provided to those who are the most likely to reoffend.
 
“We want to make sure that diversion programs are meeting all the key goals, especially reducing recidivism or the likelihood that someone will commit a new crime and create another victim in our community,” said Cordova.
 
Cordova stresses that the benefits of prosecution-led diversion programs apply not only to an offender, but also a victim and the community as a whole. The programs engage victims in offender accountability; work to achieve safer communities with reoriented offenders; reduce offender collateral consequences such as loss of employment and family instability; and for a deputy county attorney, utilizing a diversion program is also a practical response to heightened expectations among the public we serve that we are making distinctions among the types of offenders we prosecute.
 
Currently, the Office offers several diversion programs: Felony Pretrial Intervention Program (FPIP), felony drug possession, justice court misdemeanors, specific first-time child abuse offenders in need of parenting classes for excessive discipline, bad check writers, and in collaboration with the Maricopa County Juvenile Probation Department, several juvenile diversion programs. 
 
The newest program, FPIP, was created for participants charged with class 4, 5 and 6 non-drug possession felony offenses. The program began in July of 2015, and from then through mid-April 2019, more than 1,000 offenders have been referred to the program. Currently there is a 70% successful completion rate by participants and only 4.1% of participants have gone on to commit a new offense. A key element of the program is also helping the victims of these crimes, and FPIP has successfully collected more than $145,000 in restitution for victims.
 
The bureau is currently working to develop a diversion program for offenders involved in certain animal cruelty cases and a program for individuals diagnosed with a serious mental illness.

Vacation Plans this Summer?
Protect Your Home Before You Go

Some of us spend a lot of time planning our summer vacation. We meticulously research hotel rooms, airfares, study maps and plan activities. But as vacation season gets underway, how much are you thinking about the security of your home when you’re away?
 
Criminals look for the path of least resistance and only need a few minutes to break into your home and steal what is valuable. But there are a few simple actions you can take to deter crime from your home.
 

• The first thing to think about is how to make your house the least appealing house on the block for criminals. Do this by making sure that your entrances, garage and driveway are visible from the street by keeping shrubs and trees appropriately trimmed and keeping these areas well-lit at night. 
• Having a home alarm system is a great deterrent, but even if you don’t have one, you can display an alarm company sign. 
• Never hide a spare key in obvious places. Criminals know what those hide-a-key boxes look like and all the typical hiding spots, such as under a rock, planter or mat by the door, or on top of the door ledge. Instead, get a coded key box or leave a spare key with a trusted neighbor. 
• Arrange to have someone pick up your mail or have the Post Office hold it for you. The same goes for newspaper deliveries. 
• If you can, leave a television or radio playing to make it sound like someone is home.

A thief takes only 5-30 seconds for entry and spends roughly 3-5 minutes in your house.
 
The first stop for a burglar is the master bedroom and master bath, so find another location to store valuables.
 
The most valuable thing a thief can take is your identity, so don’t leave documents with sensitive personal information out in the open or in easily accessible places.

When you’re at home:

From burglary reports reviewed by the MCAO, we regularly see scenarios where a homeowner was too busy to answer the door, or didn’t recognize the person knocking, so they ignored it.
 

Bad idea!

 
Frequently, these situations are followed by the door being kicked in or a stranger breaking into the house from the back yard.
 
Typically, burglars are attempting to locate homes where the residents are NOT present so that they can enter without confrontation and have a better chance of stealing property without being identified.
 
A good piece of advice is to ALWAYS respond to the knocking when it is someone you don’t know by calling through the door, “not interested,” “go away,” “I am busy, go away or I will call the police,” etc. but NEVER open or unlock the door, just loudly call through it. The object is to let the stranger know that someone is at home inside the residence who is awake and alert and able to call the police.
 
In another scenario, a stranger may come to your door and ask to use your phone. They may say their car broke down, or it might be someone adamantly insisting that they need help. In those instances, DO NOT open your door, but offer to make the phone call for them.
 
If someone comes to your door to perform a service on your home or property and you weren’t expecting them, ask for identification. It’s okay to call the company and verify that they sent someone out.
 
Lastly, call the police anytime you see strange activity in the neighborhood.

Coffee with the Community

MCAO detectives joined with the Buckeye Police Department on May 18 for Coffee with the Community. It was an opportunity for residents to come out and meet their local law enforcement, to ask questions and voice any public safety concerns.

Employee Health and Fitness Day Walk

On May 9, MCAO staff joined the 2019 Employee Health and Fitness Day Walk. Nearly 1,500 employees from the County and City of Phoenix got up early to walk from the Maricopa County Courts Building to Chase Field and back to the Office in support of Employee Health and Fitness Month.

Upcoming Events Calendar

Safe Kids Summer - Mesa Brimhall Aquatics Center 

Wednesday, June 5
2:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.
Mesa Brimhall Aquatics Center
4949 East Southern Avenue
Mesa, AZ 85206

Safe Kids Summer - Glendale Main Library

Thursday, June 6
6:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.
Glendale Main Library
5959 West Brown Street
Glendale, AZ  85302

Safe Kids Summer - Mesa Carson Aquatics Center 

Friday, June 7
4:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.
Mesa Carson Aquatics Center 
525 North Westwood
Mesa, AZ 85201

Safe Kids Summer - Glendale Velma Teague Library

Wednesday, June 12
12:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m.
Glendale Velma Teague Library
7010 North 58^th Avenue
Glendale, AZ  85301

Safe Kids Summer - Glendale Foothills Branch Library

Monday, June 17
12:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m.
Glendale Foothills Branch Library
19055 North 57^th Avenue
Glendale, AZ 85308

Cases of Community Interest