Or were the police themselves part of a cover-up?
The grand jury report alleging sexual abuse by Sandusky and perjury and failure to report by two university administrators — including the vice president who oversaw the campus police — suggests it was others who dropped the ball. But it also leaves many questions unanswered.
Campus police conducted a “thorough’’ investigation of one victim’s allegations in 1998 along with local police and state investigators, the report says, only to have the district attorney decline to prosecute. And the report says university police were never notified by anyone at the university of assistant coach Mike McQueary’s report he’d seen Sandusky rape a boy in a campus shower. While former vice president of finance Gary Schultz oversaw the police department, he is charged with breaking the law by failing to report the accusation to actual university police officers or other authorities.
But in an email obtained earlier this week by The Associated Press, McQueary insists he did “have discussions with police and with the official at the university in charge of police.’’ That contradicts the grand jury report, however, and on Wednesday both police departments reiterated they had no record of any report by McQueary.
The grand jury report also leaves ambiguity about the tone and substance of the investigation campus police did conduct in 1998. For instance, when campus police Detective Ronald Schreffler and a state child welfare investigator interviewed Sandusky, the report says Sandusky admitted showering with the victim and “that it was wrong. Detective Schreffler advised Sandusky not to shower with any child again and he said that he would not.’’
For decades, campus police had reputations as Keystone Kops who couldn’t hack it as “real’’ police and who spent most of their energy breaking up fights and busting keg parties, turning more serious matters over to local government authorities.
