By Marc Perrusquia
Source: Commercial Appeal
November 8, 2017
A retired police lieutenant pulled no punches Wednesday while testifying that Memphis Police Department supervisors condoned widespread neglect and incompetence in sex crimes investigations.
Among allegations, former Lt. Cody Wilkerson said detectives at times failed to investigate cases even after the state crime lab produced DNA matches on suspects.
The 26-year MPD veteran who retired in 2015 after several years as a sex crimes detective, including three on MPD’s DNA squad investigating cold-case rapes, offered an especially harsh critique of Col. Marcus Worthy, who has served in the sex crimes unit.
“Every single investigator in the DNA unit, including myself, has (re-)investigated cases where Marcus Worthy did absolutely nothing on his cases. Yet he gets promoted to colonel. And then he’s put in charge over the DNA unit that’s re-investigating cases where he did absolutely nothing.”
Lawyers representing the city declined to comment on Wilkerson’s allegations as they left the hearing. Worthy did not immediately respond to a reporter’s phone message left Wednesday afternoon at the Ridgeway Station precinct, where he now serves as commander.
Wilkerson’s testimony came in a deposition hearing in an East Memphis law office as part of an ongoing lawsuit by a number of rape victims who have accused the city of neglect in failing to test thousands of rape kits over the past 30 years.
City officials have said many of the untested kits involve older cases from an era before investigators realized the potential of DNA testing.
Yet Wilkerson’s testimony provides what might be a watershed moment in the controversy: He says the problem persisted well after DNA testing became standard practice.
Attorney Gary K. Smith, who represents the rape victims in the Shelby County Circuit Court suit, said after the hearing evidence will show detectives repeatedly failed to conduct even minimal investigations in rape cases.
“It happened every day,” he said. “In the last few years, it’s happened thousands of times.”
Among examples in his testimony, Wilkerson pointed to the case of convicted rapist Sammie Grant. The retired detective, who is now a commercial airline pilot, testified that a detective failed to submit a rape kit for testing following a 2006 rape by Grant; Grant went on to attack two others.
“Had the detective done his job in 2006 — all he had to do was submit this rape kit — those two other rapes could have been avoided,” Wilkerson said as city attorneys and a top police executive watched.
Wilkerson says investigators closed a “substantial percentage” of cases without submitting rape kits for testing or conducting even minimal investigation.
Wilkerson said he complained often to top brass, naming MPD Deputy Director Mike Ryall among others. Instead, problems only intensified, Wilkerson contends.
“Marcus Worthy, (on) his very first day as colonel over investigative services, I hear him speak to two other investigators and he said, ‘The first thing we need to do is start locking up more victims for false reporting.’ That was his goal and his mission when he became the colonel over investigative services.”
The problem got so bad, the retired officer said, administrators even told him to stop talking to a victim advocate at the Rape Crisis Center.
“It was making the police department look bad,” he said.
Wilkerson said, to his knowledge, supervisors have failed to discipline any sex crimes detectives except Ouita Knowlton, who was demoted and received a four-week suspension this fall for passing sensitive investigative details to the family of a rape suspect. Deputy Chief Don Crowe said Wednesday prior to the hearing that Knowlton is back at work as a general assignment precinct detective.
Attorney Smith told reporters he now plans to take deposition testimony from Crowe, Ryall and former Police Director Tony Armstrong.
Robert Meyers, the lead attorney representing the city, said as he was leaving the hearing that several steps remain before lawyers will know what impact, if any, Wilkerson’s deposition might have on the case. “Certainly we’ll be using the process and we’ll respond at the appropriate time,” he said.