The day after a Tucson police recruit was shot dead while fighting intruders inside his home, one of three suspects was located, Pima County Sheriff's Department Sergeant Aaron Cross said.
But when detectives asked to contain the home until the already in-progress arrest warrant was officially signed and SWAT could arrive, the Sheriff's Department command denied the request, giving Alex Barnett, 33, the chance to flee, Cross said.
Four days later, Barnett was ultimately taken into custody after a three-hour standoff at an apartment complex on Tucson’s eastside.
“This armed and dangerous subject unnecessarily had several days of freedom, and everyone just got very lucky that no one else got hurt, and that this resulted in a peaceful arrest,” said Cross, the president of the Pima County Deputy's Organization and the statewide AZCOPS union. “I hope that evidence from this crime was not destroyed in those additional days that he was given.”
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The decision, he added, follows a pattern of poor decisions coming down from command – something he attributes to Nanos promoting people based on loyalty rather than merit.
“It's just destroying this agency,” he said. “Our readiness and capabilities are really being hurt because of it, and I don't have a rational explanation for people as to why it's happening except loyalty is perceived to be the only currency that matters inside the Sheriff's Department under Chris Nanos.”
In an interview, Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos neither accepted nor denied Cross’ account of how things happened as the department zeroed in on Barnett.
Barnett
“I have no clue because we don’t get into those weeds,” Nanos said.
Instead, he said that security considerations are an everyday part of the sheriff’s department’s process of serving warrants.
“This is a violent crime. It’s a homicide. Naturally you’re going to go to SWAT,” Nanos said, explaining the usual process. “The commander for SWAT would say, ‘I think we’ll send two guys and a dog or a dog and bomb squad.’ Or they could say, 'We’re going to send everybody.’”
“Those people in charge who are on the ground doing the work, they make those decisions with their bosses,” Nanos said.
Because Barnett posed an active risk to the community, taking the opportunity to contain him should have been the priority to avoid giving him the chance to flee, Cross said.
“There's a saying in law enforcement that you cannot apply a tactical solution to a mobile problem," he said. "This isn't the military. We don't have missiles on jets or anything. If someone goes mobile in a car or a motorcycle, it makes apprehending them very difficult. We have to get them static or stationary first. We're not going to have a SWAT team engaging in a pursuit with a suspect.”
Barnett was arrested without incident on Aug. 24, the department has said. He and Santiago Rogers, who was arrested at a southside hotel on Aug. 22, are both currently being held without bond at the Pima County jail and face charges of first-degree murder and armed robbery.
Nanos called Barnett’s arrest, which involved a SWAT team surrounding him and talking with him for hours, “a successful operation.”
“I am actually very pleased because the only thing I tell my SWAT team is, if you have somebody locked down in a house or wherever, you will talk to them till the cows go home. We want everyone, including the bad guy, to go home safe."
A third man whom authorities suspected to be involved came to the sheriff’s department with his attorney over the weekend, Nanos said.
“We listed him as a suspect in this case because we wanted to know what he was doing with a car involved in the homicide. He came in on his own with his attorney on Saturday and said, 'I’m who you’re looking for,' and he gave us a story about the car. We said, 'Thank you very much.' We released him. We didn’t arrest him.”
“Now we will back-check his story. If his story checks out, then he doesn’t have anything to worry about. If it doesn’t check out, then we’re going to go back and revisit him.”
“Are there others involved in this? We’re not done with it. We’re still looking at others.”
'A lot of speculation'
Both Nanos and the union representing corrections officer said they believe the couple was not targeted due to their work in law enforcement.
Nanos recently said investigators believe it was a drug rip that mistakenly targeted the wrong home.
"Of course we are shocked and saddened by the brutal attack which severely injured our member and coworker as well as the killing of her fiancé," the Sheriff’s Labor Association of Pima County said in a statement to the Star. "We believe that it was a random attack and did not target anyone due to their profession."
However, rumors and claims about the couple being linked to one or both of the men arrested are circulating online with no definitive evidence to back them up as of yet.
“You can't share everything because there's an investigation going on,” Cross said. “But nature abhors a vacuum, and if you don't provide information, it's going to get filled with a lot of speculation, unfortunately. And you see a lot of that online.”
Asked about Cross’ public commentary on this and other cases, such as Nancy Guthrie’s disappearance earlier this year, Nanos said, “Aaron’s got an opinion just like everybody. He’s been told he shouldn’t be commenting on ongoing criminal cases that he’s not part of.”
Nanos said Cross has been called into internal affairs several times, but he doesn’t plan to try to rein Cross in unless he hurts a case the department is working on.
“If you harm a case, where it can’t be prosecuted or the county attorneys dismiss it, then I might change my opinion on this.”
