While I empathize with the pain the DR's family is experiencing and the helplessness they must feel, from the beginning I've felt that the way they've been running their own quasi-investigation was problematic. There is a reason LE does not share minute-by-minute updates of their investigation with families: not only does doing so jeopardize the integrity of the investigation, it can also lead to families publicizing unconfirmed information as fact.
Although LE isn't perfect or above criticism by any means, I don't believe they have done anything questionable in this case. DR is an adult, and when police responded to the farm, they saw no obvious signs of foul play: no signs of a break-in, no signs of a struggle, no valuables missing from the trailer, etc. Treating the property as a crime scene at that time when there was no evidence to suggest a crime took place would've been a major violation of protocol and potentially DR's privacy.
IMO, the inflammatory statements released by DR's family accusing LE of not properly investigating DR's disappearance and publicly naming an individual as a POI without any proof of their involvement did nothing to help the search for DR. If foul play turns out to be involved (which at this point I'm not 100% convinced it is), the family's involvement (especially their dissemination of rumors as facts) will play right into the defense's hands.
I think the statement the sheriff's office release deliberately referring to it as a "missing persons/criminal investigation" was done primarily to placate the family and head off any more accusations of wrongdoing or incompetence. I am sure they have been considering all possibilities from the start, but without clear evidence supporting foul play, they can't officially classify it as a criminal investigation. I interpreted the statement as their way of saying "this is a missing persons investigation, but we are making it clear we aren't ruling out the possibility of foul play."
MOO.