Michael Ragusa — now serving a 10-year prison sentence after being convicted of sexually assaulting three women — admitted during the hiring process with the Miami Police Department that he’d solicited a prostitute, committed theft, sold stolen property and abused a relative. He also was flagged by a psychologist as having impulse control issues.
Still, Ragusa was hired, and he remained on the force for more than three years. Officials later said that the investigator in charge of his background check had himself been disciplined 26 times and was once arrested for falsifying documents.
Changes have resulted from the Ragusa case, according to Miami Police Major Delrish Moss. Psychological assessments of prospective officers have been revised and applications are reviewed more carefully and go through at least five levels of officials, rather than just two.
Barbara Heyer, an attorney who represented one of Ragusa’s victims, said departments big and small have no excuse for not weeding out bad hires, considering today’s technology.
“To say they don’t have the wherewithal … given the Internet and everything else, that’s just a crock,” she said.
Heyer said that the victim she represented left the country, unable to escape the terror instilled by the rape. Ragusa had threatened the woman’s child, Heyer said, and “she was always fearful he would get out and come look for her.”
“She just couldn’t get past the fact that this was a police officer.”
Story by Nomaan Merchant, a Dallas-based reporter, Matt Sedensky, an AP national writer, and AP reporter Joe Mandak contributed to this report.
Article Appeared @http://www.mprnews.org/story/2015/11/02/broken-system-lets-problem-officers-jump-from-job-to-job