Family Violence Detective Resigns Amid Investigation
DALLAS (CBSDFW.COM) - A Dallas Police detective at the center of an investigation over failing to follow up on domestic violence case is leaving the department amid a scandal involving his performance.
CBS 11 has learned that Detective Mickey East submitted his retirement Thursday evening.
The resignation follows a two-year investigation into his work after hundreds of domestic and family violence case files were found in the garage of his home.
The detective initially told his supervisors that he was just overworked and stored the files in the garage so he could work from home. But department officials had concerns that the cases being neglected.
"It was very disappointing to know that a detective would not do everything he could to investigate the cases," Deputy Chief Sheryll Scott told CBS 11.
After a two year examination of Detective East's 2,274 cases, department officials found that 509 of those victims had suffered more abuse by the same perpetrators otherwise known as re-victimization. "It's a tragic situation and I hate to speculate as to why a police officer would make that decision it's a very dangerous situation let me put it that way," said Jennifer Morrison, the Executive Director of New Beginning, a Garland domestic violence support organization.
Morrison says it takes courage for victims to seek help and often go back into abusive relationships when they don't get it.
"They reach out to get help when they aren't able to help themselves then they are met with these barriers they go back and by the time they go back into that relationship they buy into that minimization."
Detective East was facing discipline for failing to follow up and adverse conduct when he submitted his retirement papers. The resignation comes one day after the results of his internal investigation were released.
The department says it will attempt to make contact with those abuse victims whose cases were never filed, but it is believed the statute of limitations has expired on most of them.
The department has taken steps to reduce the workload of family violence detectives by adding seven more officers to the unit and a new database is expected to improve the monitoring of cases.
