IAPE Evidence Blog

www.tampabay.com
BYLINE: Logan Neill, Times Staff Writer
Link to Article

Brooksville, FL

BROOKSVILLE — An inves­ti­ga­tion begun more than two years ago into 2,155 items — includ­ing guns, drugs and money — miss­ing from the Brooksville Police Depart­ment evi­dence room has con­cluded, with all but 13 of the items located.

The Florida Depart­ment of Law Enforce­ment began the audit in May 2007 after a request by interim police Chief Frank Ross, who ini­tially sought help from the Her­nando County Sheriff’s Office.

The audit by the Sheriff’s Office revealed two dozen guns, more than $4,000 in cash and unknown quan­ti­ties of drugs were miss­ing. At the rec­om­men­da­tion of Sher­iff Richard Nugent, Ross asked the FDLE to get involved.

The audit cast a cloud over the man­age­ment of the evi­dence room dur­ing the con­tro­ver­sial tenure of long­time Brooksville police Chief Ed Tincher, whom Ross replaced.

While some of the items in the ini­tial audit were miss­ing, oth­ers were unmarked or never cat­a­logued. The inven­tory in 2007 showed 6,129 items on hand while the department’s evi­dence computer’s data­base listed only 3,901 items. More than 1,500 pieces were not labeled with any case num­ber or other information.

The FDLE report con­cluded that the evi­dence dis­crep­an­cies were the result of sub­stan­dard record-keeping and control.

Brooksville police Chief George Turner agreed, say­ing that with­out proper track­ing and han­dling, “things get mis­la­beled, put in the wrong place or just plain forgotten.”

Turner, who took over as chief in Sep­tem­ber 2007, recalls being greeted by FDLE inves­ti­ga­tors on his first day on the job. Since then he esti­mates his staff has put “thou­sands of hours” into sort­ing through the mas­sive num­ber of items that had accu­mu­lated over the years.

“We had stuff in there dat­ing back to the 1980s that didn’t need to be there,” Turner said. “Drugs, weapons, all kinds of things that nobody around here knew any­thing about.”

The report noted that 13 items remain unac­counted for, includ­ing three hand­guns, two of which were involved in death inves­ti­ga­tions; and a lit­tle more than $700 in cash.

How­ever, Assis­tant State Attor­ney Don Bar­bee said that his depart­ment reviewed all of the dis­crep­an­cies, and found “no issues with our crim­i­nal cases.”

Turner said that the depart­ment has taken steps to improve oper­a­tions at the evi­dence room, includ­ing spe­cial­ized train­ing for work­ers, an evi­dence track­ing soft­ware pro­gram, video and secu­rity upgrades, purg­ing all closed case exhibits and fol­low­ing state standards.

“This is one thing that won’t hap­pen again,” Turner said.

Logan Neill can be reached at lneill@sptimes.com or 848‑1435.

- — - — - — - — - — - — - — - — - — - — - — - — - — - — - — -
Inter­na­tional Asso­ci­a­tion for Prop­erty and Evi­dence
“Law Enforce­ment Serv­ing the Needs of Law Enforce­ment”
www.IAPE.org