One Capt. Brandon Ratcliffe of the Price City Police Department conducted an official independent review of Moab City PD’s handling of the case. Here is the 100 page PDF released by Moab City. You’ll want to look at p. 13 on (p. 16 of the PDF), which should come right up from the link.
He goes step by step what the police did, based on the reports and his own interviews, and tells you what he thinks they did right and wrong. Of relevance here he argues that both officers on the scene had a mistaken belief that the assault statute required intent, and based on that belief misclassified the case as a mental/emotional health break rather than domestic assault. One officer goes at length in the interview in how he determined that Ms. Petito did not have intent to cause bodily harm, and how intent is implicit in attempted assault; Capt. Ratcliffe’s opinion is that the officer made the mistake of only reading section a) of the assault statute, providing for attempted assault, whereas section b) for actual assault does not require intent.
I explained to Officer Pratt the four culpabilities and their levels. I also read Officer Pratt the assault code in full. Officer Pratt said, “that does change things.” Officer Pratt stated he is sure he has read that part of the assault code before and it “has to be addressed.” Officer Pratt said he probably got side tracked with the bodily injury portion of the assault code and went and read the definition for bodily injury, neglecting to scroll down and read the rest of the assault statute. Officer Pratt said, “And if I did that’s a mistake and it may have changed our decisions but I can’t say that even here now, until I read it and really think about it for a few minutes, because I do take the act of putting people in handcuffs and taking their freedom and giving them charges very seriously and I usually spend a little bit of time reading up on it first and then trying to figure out if that’s going to fly. So yes, that second part you said I would admit that could have changed what we decided to do but I would still have to look it over and think about it.”
In a subsequent interview with Officer Robbins, I asked how he reached the conclusion that an assault did not take place. Officer Robbins stated he observed the code Officer Pratt showed him and, in that code, it said, “with the intent to cause harm.” Officer Robbins stated, “I went with that one because she said that she didn’t have the intent to harm him.” I asked Officer Robbins if he just went with what he was told by Officer Pratt or if he actually observed the code himself. Officer Robbins stated Officer Pratt “showed me the code.” Officer Robbins added again that the assault code says, “with the intent to cause bodily injury.” I read the assault code in full and asked Officer Robbins if anywhere in the code it said the word, “intent.” Officer Robbins said, “it might have been somewhere else I’m not sure.”
~Max