Logan police will investigate officer who showed off explicit photos of Lauren McCluskey

The Logan Police Department has announced that it will investigate Officer Miguel Deras, who is accused of showing off explicit photos of student-athlete Lauren McCluskey while he was supposed to be investigating her extortion case at his previous job with the University of Utah.

In a statement Sunday evening, the department said it didn’t know about the incident prior to hiring him and only learned about it from a story in The Salt Lake Tribune.

“We are very concerned about this allegation and are starting our own internal investigation to determine the facts,” the statement read. “At the end of the investigation we will take whatever action is appropriate based on the facts we discover.”

Deras began working for Logan police in September 2019 after leaving the U.

Before that, though, he had been assigned to investigate McCluskey’s concerns when she came to the U.’s campus police department in October 2018. She reported that someone was threatening to release compromising photos she had taken of herself if she didn’t hand over $1,000.

Scared by the demand, she paid the money and then sent copies of the messages and the pictures to Deras as evidence for her case. He saved the photos on his personal phone. And days before McCluskey was killed by the man who was blackmailing her, Deras showed off at least one of the images to a male co-worker and bragged about getting to look at them whenever he wanted, according to two fellow officers.

The U. confirmed to The Tribune that the incident occurred as part of a records request after speaking to the co-worker. The Tribune also spoke to another officer who overheard the conversation and noted that Deras “boasted” about it.

Neither officer reported the incident at the time, and Deras was never disciplined for it. The U. has said that he left the department before the school learned about his conduct.

The Salt Lake Tribune will update this story.

from The Salt Lake Tribune https://ift.tt/2ygj5cA