- A Utah woman, Azalea, criticized Sandy police for slow response to stalking.
- Police took over two weeks to investigate, despite Azalea's escalating threats.
- Experts stress urgency in stalking cases; Sandy police arrested a suspect later.
SANDY — Fearing for her life, a Utah woman asked police for help. But it took detectives more than two weeks to start investigating her claims of stalking, harassment and revenge porn.
"It was just every day continuing like the emails and the pictures," said the woman, who asked to be identified in this story by her first name, Azalea.
Instead of enjoying the summer and spending time with friends, Azalea says she has been living a nightmare.
"Unless someone has experienced this for themselves, they don't have any idea what it's like to live in constant fear," she said, through tears.
Over the past several weeks, Azalea says she has received dozens of harassing and threatening emails. Many of them are vulgar and indicate she's being watched. One read, "that's not where you usually park…" on a day she parked her car closer to the building she works in, out of fear for her safety. Many of the messages have included vague threats of teaching Azalea a lesson and "karma."
Others in her life, including her attorney, also began receiving messages containing intimate images of Azalea.
She reported the stalking to police and submitted all her evidence to the courts. Azalea was granted a stalking injunction against a man she broke up with in May. After he requested a hearing, she presented that evidence in court. After hearing from Azalea, the man, and multiple witnesses, a judge upheld the stalking injunction.
"In fact, this is one of the most egregious stalking cases that I've presided over," said Third District Judge Coral Sanchez.
But the messages didn't stop. And Azalea still hadn't heard from a detective.
According to Sandy police, Azalea first reported to them on May 16 and again on May 21. She said she didn't hear from a detective until June 4, the same day she reached out to the KSL Investigators and our team started asking questions.
"I said, 'Is it going to take until he kills me for you guys to do something?' and they were like, 'Well, don't think like that.' and I said, 'I can't not think like that,'" Azalea recalled.
As she's waited, Azalea said she's felt like she can't go home or go anywhere alone.
"I just don't think there was any sense of urgency at all in the beginning when I had to specifically keep telling them, 'He's escalating. He's getting madder and madder. The things he's saying are more vulgar,'" she said.
Sandy police would not participate in an interview, but a public information officer did answer some of our questions over the phone and via email. Sgt. Greg Moffitt said the detective assigned to the case was away at a mandatory training when Azalea's reports first came in. He also noted the holiday weekend in May. And he said there's typically a one-week delay between when a victim comes in and makes a report and that case gets assigned to an investigator.
The KSL Investigators consulted two former longtime law enforcers. Greg Rogers is a former prosecutor and retired FBI agent.
"A week is an eternity in a case like this," he said. "These cases need to be addressed as soon as they're called in. They need to be treated like a 911 call."
Fred Ross, a retired police chief, agreed, "Those should be assigned immediately."
"We shouldn't be assigning cases to the people that are out on training, those that are out on vacation," he said. "Time is of the essence."
Ross said stalking cases are volatile, and the stalker in this case is someone who's lost control and is unpredictable.
"If they're short-staffed, let's be a Swiss army knife," he said of the police department. "There's somebody in the hierarchy that knows how to do that. Let's step up and let's get it done."
"You won't find anybody more pro cop than me," said Rogers. But he said, in this case, Sandy police were too slow to act. "There has to be immediate action."
Delays in addressing stalking can be deadly. In 2018, University of Utah student Lauren McCluskey was killed by her stalker 10 days after reporting to police. And in 2017, Memorez Rackley was gunned down by her stalker three days after calling Sandy police for help.
Both cases led to lessons learned and laws changed, which is why what's happened in Azalea's case is so troubling.
"Based on what I know right now, absolutely, I feel like she's in danger," Ross said.
Sgt. Moffitt with Sandy Police wrote in an email, "With this case, there were pages and pages of email messages and text messages to analyze. There were several different phone numbers used, as well as more than 10 email addresses used. In total, from the initial report to arrest, we had the case for three weeks. Given the nature of the case, the individual circumstances related to it, we do believe that three weeks is a reasonable time."
Sandy police did arrest a suspect on Thursday, 27 days after Azalea's initial report. But he was released Friday after prosecutors asked police to gather more evidence before they file charges.
Moffitt also acknowledged Azalea's initial report should have instigated a lethality assessment, which is a survey police use to determine how much danger a victim is in — and it's mandated by Utah law.
"The officer who took the original case will be dealt with accordingly for this oversight," Moffitt wrote. "The detective assigned to the case has since administered the lethality assessment."
"They didn't do it and that's, quite frankly, that's inexcusable," said Rogers. "This can't happen. This can't happen. This needs to be the last time this happens in Sandy."
Azalea hopes her experience helps law enforcement understand the urgency and fear.
Asked whether she feels failed by the system, Azalea replied, "100%."
