IAPE Evidence Blog

The News Her­ald (Panama City, Florida), STATE AND REGIONAL NEWS
BYLINE: Andrew Gant, The News Her­ald, Panama City, Fla.

Lynn Haven, FL

May 31 — LYNN HAVEN — A man cleared of a 2008 cocaine charge is being reim­bursed for the cash police seized from his home and later lost from an evi­dence room.

San­ti­ago Igle­sias, now 61, had $8,410 reported con­fis­cated in Novem­ber 2008 when police arrested him on cocaine and other charges. About a year later, after pros­e­cu­tors dropped the drug charge, a judge ordered the money returned.

Police could find only $5,490 of it and acknowl­edged $2,920 — 29 $100 bills, three $5 bills and five $1 bills — went missing.

On Sun­day, attor­ney Bill Price, who has rep­re­sented Igle­sias in the past, said he has been informed he will be receiv­ing a check this week on Igle­sias’ behalf. He also appar­ently will be get­ting a 50-piece set of chef’s knives and a gun seized in the case.

Lynn Haven attor­ney Rob Jack­son con­firmed the check and prop­erty are on the way, as ordered.

The state Depart­ment of Law Enforcement’s inves­ti­ga­tion into what hap­pened remained “active and ongo­ing” Fri­day, accord­ing to depart­ment spokesman Mike Morrison.

Igle­sias, liv­ing in a halfway house in Pen­sacola since his release from fed­eral prison camp, was glad to hear of the reim­burse­ment Sun­day but said he still plans to file a civil rights vio­la­tion in fed­eral court. He said police actu­ally seized even more cash from him than they recorded in inventory.

Igle­sias first was released from prison in 2007 after serv­ing time for a cocaine traf­fick­ing oper­a­tion based in Colom­bia. He admit­ted to “doing the logis­tics for a drug oper­a­tion” but said he never sold or dealt drugs himself.

When Lynn Haven police arrested him in 2008, he went back to prison on a vio­la­tion of his super­vised release.

Pros­e­cu­tors dropped charges of cocaine pos­ses­sion and pos­ses­sion of forged iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, but a mis­de­meanor drug para­pher­na­lia charge remained.

“The Lynn Haven Police Depart­ment, I think, has more cred­i­bil­ity issues than I have at this point,” Igle­sias said when asked if he thinks peo­ple will believe him about the addi­tional miss­ing cash.

He said he “more than likely” will file a civil rights vio­la­tion in fed­eral court. Last Mon­day, he already had filed a motion to com­pel in the 14th Judi­cial Cir­cuit, ask­ing Cir­cuit Judge Dedee Costello to hold the police depart­ment in con­tempt if he didn’t get his prop­erty back.

Price, whom Igle­sias said he fired ear­lier this month, indi­cated there is no way to prove any­thing else disappeared.

“I don’t doubt that he’s earnest, that there may be some items that they did not inven­tory,” Price said, but unfor­tu­nately if those items were not inven­to­ried by Lynn Haven, then nobody’s going to know.”

Fel­low attor­ney Way­lon Gra­ham, who rep­re­sents Sgt. Larry Thomas, the for­mer police super­vi­sor Igle­sias has accused of involve­ment in the money’s dis­ap­pear­ance, repeated his ear­lier posi­tion on what hap­pened: No one can tell.

“It was a loosey-goosey oper­a­tion where they didn’t have good con­trols,” Gra­ham said. “Who knows where the money is?”

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