IAPE Evidence Blog

Patriot News (Har­ris­burg, PA), FINAL EDITION, LOCAL/STATE; Pg. A03
BYLINE: Of the Patriot-News MATTHEW KEMENY

Har­ris­burg, PA

As a patrol sergeant work­ing his way through the Har­ris­burg police force in the early 1990s, Chief Pierre Rit­ter recalls a traf­fic stop in which he found not only drugs but more than $60,000 in cash stuffed inside a shav­ing kit.

Rit­ter said that he eas­ily could have pock­eted $30,000 and turned in the rest, but that his integrity pre­vented him from doing that.

The point is, there’s no way a police depart­ment can com­pletely ensure its offi­cers are always doing the right things, but it can take steps to pre­vent wrong­do­ing, Rit­ter said.

Ritter’s com­ments came Fri­day in the wake of two offi­cers — one retired and one on the force — being accused of steal­ing hand­guns ear­marked for destruc­tion from the department’s evi­dence room.

City offi­cials said that the men took the guns for their pri­vate use and that no cases were com­pro­mised. The depart­ment has taken steps to ensure against it hap­pen­ing again, they said.

Accord­ing to offi­cials, Patrol­man David Earl Black, 43, of Mechan­ics­burg, and retired offi­cer Frank Peskie, 59, of High­spire, were at sep­a­rate times prop­erty man­age­ment offi­cers. Their jobs included han­dling, tak­ing inven­tory of and destroy­ing evidence.

Black, who’s been with the force almost 20 years, was charged with felony theft and evi­dence tam­per­ing. He has been sus­pended with­out pay, pend­ing the out­come of the case. If con­victed, he could lose his pen­sion, Rit­ter said.

Peskie, who retired about a decade ago after about 30 years, was charged with two mis­de­meanor counts of theft by receiv­ing stolen prop­erty because the statute of lim­i­ta­tions on felony theft charges had expired, author­i­ties said.

Black and Peskie were arraigned and released on their own recog­ni­zance. It’s unclear if they’ve obtained attor­neys and nei­ther could be reached for com­ment Friday.

Shortly after the inves­ti­ga­tion began late last year, the depart­ment began staffing the evi­dence room with a super­vi­sor in addi­tion to an offi­cer, Rit­ter said.

The depart­ment also started hav­ing inter­nal affairs offi­cers video­tape firearms that are tagged for destruc­tion to make sure all items are accounted for before the guns are taken to Beth­le­hem steel or the city incin­er­a­tor to be destroyed, he said.

Rit­ter esti­mated the city col­lects about six firearms a week as evidence.

The inves­ti­ga­tion began in Novem­ber when Peskie’s daugh­ter, Dolores Williams, was pulled over in a traf­fic stop and told offi­cers she had a hand­gun on her that her father gave her, accord­ing to court records. Police checked the gun, a Beretta Tom­cat, and dis­cov­ered it was stolen, accord­ing to court records.

Peskie told offi­cers he intended to pur­chase the gun from its owner but he was never able to do that, court records state. The gun was in the evi­dence room labeled for destruc­tion, but Peskie took it for him­self, records state.

Shortly after­ward, police con­ducted a review of all evi­dence room records and dis­cov­ered a dif­fer­ent gun, one that was sup­posed to have been destroyed, was trans­ferred to Black, accord­ing to court records. Black was inter­viewed and admit­ted tak­ing the gun, records state.

No other evi­dence was found to be miss­ing, police said.

“We will not tol­er­ate this type of behav­ior. Police offi­cers don’t get a free pass when it comes to the law,” Har­ris­burg Mayor Linda Thomp­son said dur­ing a news con­fer­ence Fri­day in which the arrests were announced. “It is an embar­rass­ment for the City of Harrisburg.”

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Inter­na­tional Asso­ci­a­tion for Prop­erty and Evi­dence
“Law Enforce­ment Serv­ing the Needs of Law Enforce­ment”
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