My reading of the situation is that this area was heavily Catholic. The PD was likely also staffed mostly by Catholics and thus held the Catholic hierarchy in some reverential awe. Any unpleasantness was sent back to the hierarchy to deal with. On an earlier thread one of them said it was the way things were done. Priests seen as being from God I guess were above mere human law or something.
I guess they missed that part in the catechism where it says that a just law requires obedience under pain of sin.
Yep, “clericalism” ie reverence for the clergy as instruments of the divine above civilians is a mental illness that caused the cover up here.