Utah university cop showed Lauren McCluskey's nude photos to at least 6 officers days before she was killed
A University of Utah police officer saved explicit pictures of college student Lauren McCluskey and shared them with at least three men after a staff briefing about the 21-year-old's complaints of being blackmailed by her ex-boyfriend. The officer shared the photographs just days before McCluskey was shot dead in her car by the same person. A detailed report was released by the university from the Utah Department of Public Safety (DPS) on Wednesday, August 4, nearly three months after the university concluded that its internal review in the case was not enough and it needed the attention of state authorities.
McCluskey, a University of Utah student, confided in campus police in October 2018 that she was being extorted by her sex-offender ex-boyfriend, identified as 37-year-old Melvin Rowland. McCluskey had told the officers that Rowland had access to some of her personal images and he was threatening to release them if she did not pay him $1000, according to the Lake Tribune. A frightened McCluskey paid the money to Rowland but when the threats did not stop, she sent copies of the threatening messages along with the explicit pictures to the police. A campus officer to whom McCluskey had made the complaint, officer Miguel Deras, reportedly saved the explicit pictures the promising athlete had given him as evidence on his personal phone and bragged about them to at least one of his male colleagues. Deras reportedly said that he could ogle at them anytime he pleased, according to the outlet. Nearly nine days after McCluskey filed the report, she was shot dead by Rowland on campus. The 37-year-old took his own life after the shooting.
Although the state DPS could not confirm whether Deras saved the photos on his phone because he changed phones shortly after McCluskey's death, the report states that the officer accessed the pictures from his work mail at least four times. Deras reportedly showed the pictures initially to a supervisor on October 13, 2018, and asked how the photos could be uploaded on the department's evidence database. Two days later, he again showed the photos to a second supervisor, asking how to attach them to a case file. On October 18, Deras, after a briefing, showed the explicit photos to three officers who were not working on the case, allegedly saying he could look at them "whenever I want." The officer, after McCluskey was killed, on October 22, again showed the pictures to a sergeant who reportedly said: "I wonder what she looked like."
McCluskey, a young track star, had ended his relationship with Rowland a month before her death after she discovered he was a registered sex offender and had lied about his name, age, and criminal history. Meanwhile, Deras was never disciplined for the incident and left the University of Utah in September 2019. Deras now works for Logan Police 85 miles away from his previous workplace. "'He was long gone before we had any inkling that that incident with the photo being shown had occurred," campus police department's Lt Jason Hinojosa told the paper.
Major Scott Stephenson, who oversees police training under the Utah Department of Public Safety in Utah, earlier this year had said that the discovery could be grounds for action against Deras' police certification. "It's very alarming to me," he told the outlet. Stephenson, however, in a recent statement said that authorities have not yet decided whether to revoke Deras' police certification.