Remember yesterday when the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office put out a press release saying how it used its "cell phone technology" to track down an inmate who escaped from an MCSO jail? Well, that was bullshit.
We spoke to U.S. Marshal for Arizona David Gonzales this morning, and he tells us the MCSO had absolutely nothing to do with tracking down the inmate, Jairo Contreras.
"We found and tracked that guy and pinpointed him in Santa Fe," Gonzales says. "[The MCSO] gave the indication that they arrested him, or they had something to do with it, which they didn't."
The MCSO didn't immediately respond to our request for comment.
While the MCSO had nothing to do with apprehending Contreras, it had everything to do with allowing him to escape (in an oversized laundry bin that was pushed out of the jail) — but there was no press release about that, which Gonzales says is not good police procedure.
Despite that fact that Contreras is a petty criminal, Gonzales says, "It's an escape — you want to put that out there."
For example, two Arizona Department of Corrections inmates escaped from a work detail in the past 18 months. In both cases, the DOC alerted the media. Get the stories here and here.
Contreras escaped about two weeks ago. He was tracked to his girlfriend's house in Santa Fe — by the U.S. Marshals Service, not the MCSO and its "cell phone technology — where he was put under surveillance by the Marshals' Southwest Fugitive Investigative Team (SWIFT).
SWIFT identified Contreras as he was getting into a vehicle at his girlfriend's residence yesterday and attempted to take him into custody. Contreras, however, took off in the vehicle and led agents on a pursuit through Santa Fe. Contreras abandoned the vehicle and proceeded on foot back to his girlfriend's house.
Gonzales says he was taken into custody without incident shortly after.
Again, the MCSO had literally nothing to do with apprehending Contreras — despite their claims of mythical "cell phone technology" leading to his arrest.
