In September 2019, the Logan City Police Department hired Officer Miguel Deras, who had recently left the University of Utah’s campus police. Police officers move from job to job just like anyone else, but Deras was not like anyone else.
He left his previous post without a great reference, considering that a petition had been signed by more than 130,000 individuals—including current and former University of Utah students—demanding he be fired for mishandling sensitive photos of murdered student Lauren McCluskey.
In 2018, McCluskey went to university police to report that someone had stolen explicit photos of her and was using them to try and extort money. A Utah Department of Public Safety review would later find Deras had inappropriately shown the pictures to at least three of his male colleagues without a work-related reason and had told one colleague that he could “look at them whenever he wants.”
After the state’s investigation was completed in 2020, Deras was promptly fired by Logan City.
Published by Utah Investigative Journalism Project, 2024. Reporting by Eric S. Peterson and Sam Stecklow.