Mitrice Richardson’s Family Support Group Keeps Up Its Pressure on Lost Hills

• Challenges Recent Award Given to Station

BY ANNE SOBLE

A psychologist who is a key member of the Mitrice Richardson family support group and volunteer search effort is challenging the validity of an award “as the highest-rated patrol station for policing services in the United States” recently given to the Lost Hills Sheriff’s Station that booked the 24-year-old woman who went missing after being released from the station on foot, without her wallet or cell phone, which were left in her impounded vehicle, shortly after midnight on Sept. 17.
Hampton has written the Altus Global Alliance, as part of an inquiry into the nature of the organization based in the Hague, that she “took the opportunity to review the questions [it] used to review the station. After reviewing [the questions], I can see how a error could occur in awarding such a distinction to a station that clearly does not deserve such an honor.” AGA states that it visited 23 stations in eight cities in the nation, without indicating how they were selected.
Hampton wrote AGA, “What is missing from the questionnaire is a section that allows for input from the community. No where on the questionnaire was there the opportunity for the fact to be mentioned that this station released [Mitrice Richardson] in the middle of the night after they had her place her keys, purse, and cell phone in her car and then had the car towed [so that she was required to walk] more than 15 miles down a dark, steep and remote canyon full of wild animals to get to it.”
Hampton added, “The case of Mitrice Richardson is not an isolated case of maltreatment by this department. My request is, in the future, consideration should be made as to how departments actually treat the public they serve and ‘protect.’ This award is a slap in the face to all who have been hurt by this department...and the award should be reconsidered.”