Pinal sheriff plagiarized in monthly letters
May 14, 2008
East
Valley Tribune News
Pinal County Sheriff Chris Vasquez has plagiarized more than a dozen times
in his monthly letters since taking office three years ago, lifting text from numerous
Web sites, journalists, lawmakers and even President Bush.
Photo and source by East Valley Tribune Staff. May 14, 2008
The plagiarism is extensive. And in many cases, the text is copied verbatim and
unattributed with copied material that ranges in size from a few sentences to entire
speeches.
Vasquez admitted that he directly "copies and pastes" material from outside
sources into many of his letters without attribution.
He added that he doesn't think it's wrong.
"You can call it plagiarism if you want," Vasquez said. "I'm just providing a public
service."
The letters are distributed to newspapers across the county that print them each
month. They also were posted on Vasquez's campaign Web site. However, they were
removed Wednesday afternoon after the Tribune inquired about them.
Experts say the plagiarized passages raise serious issues of integrity and credibility,
especially because the sheriff is an elected official and sits on the Arizona Peace
Officer Standards and Training Board, or AZPOST, which determines punishments for
police officers.
"If they are deceiving the public about this, then what else are they deceiving
the public about?" said Ted Burke, a former police officer and member of the Institute
of Criminal Justice Ethics in New York City.
"This is deception and a matter of ethics," he said. "The public's trust in police
can get hurt."
However, the sheriff said he and others at AZPOST think any controversy surrounding
plagiarism in his letters is humorous.
"I told (AZPOST) exactly what I told you," Vasquez said. "You know what they
did? They laughed, and they said how stupid this is and that they don't have a problem
with what I'm doing."
However, in 2005, the AZPOST board permanently denied a police cadet certification
because he submitted plagiarized essays with his job application, board records
show. The cadet's name wasn't released.
Vasquez has written more than 30 letters since taking office in 2005. They are signed
only by the sheriff and do not attribute or list any other source.
The letters cover a variety of subjects, including methamphetamine use, ATV riding
and child violence, and they are reviewed by Vasquez's spokesman, Mike Minter, before
being released.
Using an Internet search, the Tribune found text in 14 letters that's exactly replicated
from other sources.
However, it's not clear if other letters contain plagiarized material.
The Tribune contacted several of the original writers, and only one gave permission
to Vasquez. The rest had never heard of or been contacted by the sheriff, who said
he doesn't feel he needed to seek permission.
One of the most telling plagiarism examples comes in the sheriff's September 2005
letter about meth.
The letter was almost an exact copy of a speech given by Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski
11 months earlier.
The only key difference: Every time the word "Oregon" appeared, it was replaced
with Arizona or Pinal County. A key statistic in the letter also was kept, stating
that meth is responsible for 85 percent of all property crimes.
That may be true in Oregon, but not necessarily in Arizona. Recent surveys and studies
cited by the Arizona Attorney General's Office find results that are much lower.
Vasquez said the statistic is true. However, he could not verify it or remember
when he wrote the letter.
Vasquez also wrote: "In recent months alone, I have read of a 9 month old who climbed
out of a two story window because his parents were too strung out on a Meth crash
to wake up."
Kulongoski's communications director, Anna Richter Taylor, said she recalls the
baby case. "That's an Oregon-specific story," she said. "I remember because I helped
write (the speech)."
The speech also was published Oct. 5, 2004, in The Oregonian newspaper.
But Kulongoski is only one of the lawmakers whose material has been lifted.
An opinion piece about remembering fallen police officers written by Sen. Mike Crapo,
R-Idaho, was copied by Vasquez nearly word for word. The only changes were a swap
of Idaho for Pinal County and the addition of a few sentences at the end to include
information about Pinal County's peace officer memorial.
Vasquez also copied text from Bush's 2003 proclamation against domestic violence.
In his November 2005 letter, he used three of Bush's paragraphs.
Vasquez sits on the AZPOST board, which has the stated mission of overseeing the
integrity of Arizona's law enforcement officers by reviewing cases and revoking
or suspending the certification of those who violate certain standards.
One of those violations is dishonesty, and the board hears dozens of those cases
every year.
Dishonesty also was the classification of the case against the cadet denied certification
for plagiarism.
Robert Forry, an AZPOST standards and certification administrator, said that dishonesty
cases are taken very seriously by the board.
"The obvious reason is it affects the integrity of the profession," he said.
While officials at AZPOST also said plagiarism is a concern, they said they weren't
authorized to comment about Vasquez's letters. AZPOST's executive director Tom Hammarstrom
was unavailable Wednesday.
Vasquez did not directly answer several questions about why he wouldn't attribute
the articles. However, he said he did understand what plagiarism is and that he
didn't think it was wrong to print the writing of others under his name.
However, other elected officials feel differently.
"Obviously attribution is a good thing, and whenever we use sources we attribute
that material," said Crapo's spokesman, Lindsay Nothern. "We are reluctant to accuse
anyone of anything. But in the case of this fallen officers memorial, his op-ed
was posted to a national Web site and a lot of people could have had access to it."
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