Sheriff Dupnik: Why No, I Won't Be Releasing My Records About Loughner And My Ineptitude In Dealing With Him. Why Do You Ask?

The Arizona Republic requested the documents. They state that such records are released as a matter of routine in criminal cases.

Dupnik's office says, Nah. Why you want to bother yourself? I told you who's to blame, didn't I?

On Monday, The Republic requested copies of any reports from the Pima County Sheriff's Department involving contacts with Loughner or calls to his house. Pima County Deputy Rene Carlson said her office would not release the reports without a specific date, though this is not required by state statute.

Carlson said providing these documents would be tantamount to releasing criminal history.

Carlson said she could not speculate on the nature of any calls for service regarding Loughner. She also said no calls or incidents involved threats made by Loughner.

That's odd, because Dupnik already admitted Loughner had made threats -- he just claimed, improbably, that the one person Loughner didn't threaten was the one he was most obsessed with (and shot in the head, of course). Now the office seems to have a fresher recollection, and remembers still less.

Now, the Governor of Arizona is Jan Brewer and, I believe, a tough bird, and I don't think she'll be letting it rest at that. Don't scream at her for not doing it yet; the memorial is today. We're supposed to hold off on politicizing this tragedy and looking for scapegoats until later -- you know, like the left held off.

But... I trust -- and I will demand -- that by week's end the governor's office begins an investigation, retrieves the documents from Dupnik's office, and gives them to the public (after making small redactions to protect the innocent from unwanted publicity).

BTW: I think Patterico is filing his own FOIA request, but I can't find that post. He asks a lot of questions here.

Incidentally, he has the LATimes headline, Loughner's Ideology Rooted In the Far Right. Enjoy!

He makes a point that occurred to me in the top post, on Palin's address. He says he thinks Palin is counting on people knowing more than they might. That... worries me too, for her.

Because the fact is, there is no evidence that Loughner ever even heard of her, or anyone on the right for that matter. But her address, by denying that she's to blame for the shooting, sort of... well, in the heads of someone who isn't following this very closely, their takeaway might be So she agitated for someone to shoot someone else and now they have and now she's just saying you can't blame me, he's a nut.

Worrisome. She's sort of hedged in (nice work, media!) in how far she can go, how fulsome a defense she can make, so she can't actually go through the entire checklist of stuff all of you know. That, you see, would be self-serving, and someone accused of high crimes by the national media can never be self-serving in their own defense.

So... Hm. I do worry about that.

posted by Ace at 01:52 PM

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