Stopping the terror

Detective named Officer of the Year for leading search for rapist

Sometimes real life becomes like something you’d see in the movies.

At least that’s how parts of 2007 seem to Chandler Detective Chris Pérez as he looks back at his time leading a task force that identified and arrested the man suspected of terrorizing the community.

Someone was raping young girls, and the criminal had to be caught before hurting another victim.

“You hear the old cop stories – chasing the bad guy and being up at all hours; you see that in the movies. In this case, it was true. The phone did ring at all hours of the night,” says Pérez, 39, a husband and father of three boys who’s been with the Chandler Police Department since 1997.

Earlier this month, he received the department’s Officer of the Year Award for his work on the case, an honor he says he accepted on behalf of all those who put in long hours and the family members who supported them.

The task force Pérez headed was created in January 2007 to find the criminal responsible for raping a series of young girls in Chandler during an 18-month period. DNA evidence allowed police to link cases and create a profile of a Hispanic male as their suspect, Pérez explains.

Then came what he said was the hardest part of the investigation – looking into more than 2,000 leads, many of which seemed promising and then fizzled into nothing.

Pérez’s heritage is a mix of German, Irish and Mexican, and he grew up in Arizona and the town of Hermosillo, Mexico. Asked if targeting a Hispanic suspect was difficult for him personally, he said in his calm, level way of speaking that he “wasn’t so much concerned with the fact that the suspect was Mexican.”

“He was a preferential sex offender who preferred children, and his race and gender were really insignificant.” 

The task force’s hard work paid off on Jan. 11, 2008 when police arrested their suspect, Santana Batiz Aceves. Shortly after, he was indicted on 47 counts of child molestation, sexual conduct with a minor and other charges. He remains in prison as he awaits his trial.

Was it all worth it? Definitely, Pérez says.

“When I talked to the victims there was an overwhelming joy, and people in Chandler can sleep better now – you can’t put a price on that,” he says.