St. Johns police chief Daniel Brown is like a lot of top cops in small Arizona towns — short of staff, short of administrative support, and short on crime.
Hate crime is not an issue in St. Johns — population 3,483 as of last year.
But St. Johns hasn't been filing its required reports on the crimes, for at least six years, even though they'd just show a zero.
The department is among five across Arizona that have failed to file FBI hate crime reports every year since 2009, filings that help the Department of Justice and others track the ebb and flow of hate crimes.
The other four are the Hayden, Kearney, and Superior police departments and the Patagonia Marshal's Office.
Guidelines call for reports to be submitted even if no crimes happened.
