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Lt. Jay Armbrister

A complaint alleges that a 2017 sex crime investigation was a “complete professional abandonment,” and it has prompted the Douglas County sheriff to request an investigation by an outside agency.

Lt. Jay Armbrister — who won 39% of the vote in the Democratic primary for Douglas County sheriff and faces no opponent in the general election — is one of three officers named in that complaint.

The case in question was briefly reported on by the Journal-World prior to the Aug. 4 primary election, in which Armbrister was one of three candidates seeking the nomination. In a July 30 article, Armbrister said he has determined that the investigation, which he led, did not live up to his personal standards and didn’t meet the standards he would have for the department as sheriff. But he also said in the July article that any mistakes in the investigation were errors committed with no ill intent.

“I stand by my statement that this was an error, and I will explain it to any jury or court,” he said at the time.

This week, Armbrister reiterated that statement. Armbrister said Tuesday that he was aware of the formal complaint filed by defense attorney Angela Keck, but he had not seen it. However, he said he can no longer speak about the topic “until it has been resolved through the process.”

“Through our conversations, I feel I have been very open and upfront about this situation,” Armbrister told the Journal-World via email Tuesday. “… I look forward to the investigation because I have nothing to hide.”

The Journal-World did not become aware of the details of the complaint until after the Aug. 4 primary election. In the complaint, Keck is alleging the mistakes in the case were grievous and call into question the professional standards of the officers involved.

Keck said she believes the officers were acting in bad faith because that’s the only answer she thinks could explain what happened. She said the “complete professional abandonment” has made it impossible to conduct any meaningful independent or forensic review of the case.

Among concerns in the complaint, Keck said that Armbrister and a deputy both failed to save their audio recordings of interviews with a woman who reported being sexually assaulted in July 2017. Keck said a warrant for her client’s DNA has disappeared, and no physical evidence was collected from the crime scene. She also said her office is investigating the “influence” of a longtime veteran of the Lawrence Police Department who is related to the woman.

In the Journal-World’s coverage leading up to the election, Armbrister told the newspaper that he lost the recording of the interview with the woman, despite department policy stating that all such interviews should be kept. He said his actions that night were “directly in support of the victim/survivor and her welfare” and that any errors made were not intentional.

“She (the alleged victim) needed support while we also needed to conduct some evidentiary assessments, which yielded significant evidence,” he said via email last month, noting that he didn’t save the recorded interview for the courts to consider.

Keck, however, questioned his statement about assessments yielding significant evidence — “absolutely no evidence was collected and no follow up interviews were done at all in the case to attempt to understand or explain the ‘evidence’ that was found — and he was the supervisor in charge,” she said via email.

She also disputed Armbrister’s claim that he didn’t save the recording because he was focused on taking care of the woman that night, noting that he had a full year to do so.

Brad Schwab, the IT supervisor for the sheriff’s office, testified that patrol vehicle cameras run constantly while deputies are on shift, but after certain events — such as a traffic stop, or work on a criminal investigation — the deputies stop the recording and “tag” it with a category. That category tag tells the system, called WatchGuard, how long to save the recordings.

Recordings tagged as criminal investigations are automatically saved in the system for a full year, according to Schwab’s testimony. Under sheriff’s office policy, investigators are supposed to download and preserve the recordings along with other reports and evidence from a case.

During a hearing in March, Schwab said an audit of the system showed that both Armbrister and the deputy had recorded and tagged their interviews with the woman, but that the recordings sat there for a year before they were automatically deleted.

The incident and investigation concluded in July 2017. CJ Rieg, former chief assistant district attorney, did not file the high-level felony charges until November 2018 — months after the recordings were already lost. Both the defense and the prosecution have said that it’s an issue because statements from other witnesses conflict with what the woman told officers.

• • •

Keck listed a number of other issues raised in the complaint:

• Negligent supervision: In his testimony during hearings on a motion Keck filed to have the case dismissed — which Douglas County District Court Chief Judge James McCabria ultimately denied — Armbrister said it was ultimately his responsibility to ensure that both recordings were saved. “Mea culpa,” he said on the witness stand.

Also in their testimony, Armbrister, the deputy, and a detective who interviewed the woman after her examination at the hospital all showed there was a lack of clarity regarding who was in charge of certain aspects of the investigation. Sheriff’s office policy states that the ranking officer at the scene of any incident is responsible “for the proper conclusion of that incident.”

• Missing records: The Journal-World in January requested the affidavit supporting a warrant to collect the defendant’s DNA in the case. However, “The Court has been informed that, after due and diligent search of records, no sworn affidavit has been located,” McCabria wrote in response.

Keck has since filed a motion to suppress DNA evidence in the case, arguing that since no signed warrant can be found, her client’s DNA was collected in violation of his constitutional rights. She confirmed that is another issue raised in the complaint.

In addition, the deputy testified that as a practice, he shredded his field notes after he wrote his report from them because he did not have a place to store them.

• Outside influence: In other court documents, Keck wrote that a witness had found a towel that the alleged victim had used that night, stained with what the witness thought might be blood. The alleged victim reportedly tried to give the towel to the sheriff’s office in case it could be of evidentiary value; eventually, though, the witness who found it handed it over to a longtime LPD veteran related to the alleged victim. It is not clear whether the towel was ever entered into evidence in the case.

• Failure to report: Keck said another issue she raised is failure of the officers to report each other for violating department policies in the investigation, and for failing to self-report their own conduct.

• • •

McCabria wrote in a memorandum denying Keck’s motion to dismiss the case because of destruction of exculpatory evidence that the evidence does not “reveal bad faith by the law enforcement officers involved.” That ruling was not written to address several of the issues raised in the complaint, though.

The judge pointed out several of the pieces missing from the investigation.

“Attention to detail, careful scene investigation and coordinated follow-up can be fairly characterized here as unimpressive. Even mystifying and confounding,” McCabria wrote, noting that all three officers appeared embarrassed about the investigation during their testimony. “… Now, in the position of looking back three years from when this analysis is being made, it is tempting to say how obvious it seems that more could and should have been done. But that is not the test.”

Ultimately, the judge ruled that it is a jury’s role to sort out conflicting testimony and determine witness credibility.

Jenn Hethcoat, public information officer for the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office, said that at the request of Sheriff Randy Roberts, the complaint is being investigated by an outside agency.

Deputy Claire Canaan, PIO for the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office, confirmed via email that Douglas County has asked that agency to assist in an internal investigation, but she said Johnson County would not release any further details.

Asked whether the sheriff’s office has any concerns that similar issues with recordings may have occurred in connection with any other cases, Hethcoat said that “This is a personnel matter with an ongoing investigation.”

Senior Assistant District Attorney Alice Walker is the prosecutor on the case. Spokespeople for the Douglas County district attorney’s office did not respond to an email sent Wednesday asking whether the office was aware of the complaint or wished to comment.

None of the officers named in the complaint has been placed on any type of administrative leave or suspension, Hethcoat said. She was unable to provide a timeline for the investigation.

As Armbrister faces no opponent in the Nov. 3 general election, he will likely become the next Douglas County sheriff, barring a successful write-in campaign.

Related coverage

• Aug. 4, 2020: Lieutenant wins in Douglas County sheriff primary

• July 30, 2020: Douglas County sheriff candidates address budget experience, release of records and more

• July 19, 2020: 2020 Primary Voters Guide: Meet the candidates for Douglas County sheriff

• June 8, 2020: Douglas County sheriff candidates share views on public transparency, training against bias-based policing

• Oct. 16, 2018: Lieutenant files to run for Douglas County sheriff in 2020