09-16-2010, 03:54 PM
PORTLAND, Ore. - A new task force will be formed to focus the investigation into the disappearance of 8-year-old Kyron Horman to specific areas and better use police resources, Multnomah County Sheriff Dan Staton said Wednesday.
Staton said during the afternoon news conference that while the investigation will be narrower, he said it is not scaling back, although he used similar language in his statement.
“We threw everything we possibly could at this (at the beginning of the investigation) because it involved a school and it involved a child,” he said. “We’ve reached a point over the course of this investigation … the information we’ve gathered, resources we’ve dedicated to this, we started looking at every possibility – we’ve narrowed it down to a scope now that is more definitive; it is time to scale this down so that you have, what I would consider, a task force.”
The task force will contain about eight to 10 detectives from various agencies and the move to create that task force was to continue the investigation in a “fiscally responsible” way.
He said the new task force will be officially formed at the end of the week or by earlier next week.
So far the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office has spent $1,044,000 investigating the disappearance of the Skyline School student, Staton said.
He said the move to a task force will enable him to release detectives to their normal duties. He said the investigation has significantly impacted the resources of the sheriff’s office.
“The commitment we have to the community has suffered because of what has been dedicated and how we’ve worked this investigation fluidly,” he said.
He said he wants the task force to contain detectives who have been on the case since the beginning.
When asked whether people would be shocked when this case comes to its conclusion Staton said, “I think that there will be things that come out of this investigation that will surprise you. That you’ll think about later on after it’s over. These are things I will tell you, when you ask me about the stresses that my staff is under and the other detectives and agency representatives are under, is that we have a knowledge of things that we don’t want to know about. ... "We have knowledge of things we wished we didn't."
Staton was clearly upset when he was talking about that and was upset when he was talking about how hard it has been on investigators over the last 15 weeks, saying they have spent a lot of time away from their own families.
The sheriff wasn't fully prepared to talk about the new task force but during a Portland Business Alliance breakfast he let two words slip: task force, which led to Wednesday's news conference to explain what he meant by that.
Staton said during the afternoon news conference that while the investigation will be narrower, he said it is not scaling back, although he used similar language in his statement.
“We threw everything we possibly could at this (at the beginning of the investigation) because it involved a school and it involved a child,” he said. “We’ve reached a point over the course of this investigation … the information we’ve gathered, resources we’ve dedicated to this, we started looking at every possibility – we’ve narrowed it down to a scope now that is more definitive; it is time to scale this down so that you have, what I would consider, a task force.”
The task force will contain about eight to 10 detectives from various agencies and the move to create that task force was to continue the investigation in a “fiscally responsible” way.
He said the new task force will be officially formed at the end of the week or by earlier next week.
So far the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office has spent $1,044,000 investigating the disappearance of the Skyline School student, Staton said.
He said the move to a task force will enable him to release detectives to their normal duties. He said the investigation has significantly impacted the resources of the sheriff’s office.
“The commitment we have to the community has suffered because of what has been dedicated and how we’ve worked this investigation fluidly,” he said.
He said he wants the task force to contain detectives who have been on the case since the beginning.
When asked whether people would be shocked when this case comes to its conclusion Staton said, “I think that there will be things that come out of this investigation that will surprise you. That you’ll think about later on after it’s over. These are things I will tell you, when you ask me about the stresses that my staff is under and the other detectives and agency representatives are under, is that we have a knowledge of things that we don’t want to know about. ... "We have knowledge of things we wished we didn't."
Staton was clearly upset when he was talking about that and was upset when he was talking about how hard it has been on investigators over the last 15 weeks, saying they have spent a lot of time away from their own families.
The sheriff wasn't fully prepared to talk about the new task force but during a Portland Business Alliance breakfast he let two words slip: task force, which led to Wednesday's news conference to explain what he meant by that.