IAPE Evidence Blog

The Okla­homan, City Edi­tion, NEWS METRO/STATE NORTH; Pg. 21A
BYLINE: ANN KELLEY, Staff Writer

McLoud, OK

McLOUD — A police dis­patcher is accused of steal­ing drugs from a police evi­dence locker.

Tracy Love­land, of McLoud, was charged Tues­day in Pot­tawatomie County Dis­trict Court with drug pos­ses­sion and lar­ceny of a con­trolled drug.

Patrick Vance, inves­ti­ga­tor for the Pot­tawatomie County Dis­trict Attorney’s Office, said Love­land was caught Sat­ur­day by a McLoud police offi­cer with an evi­dence bag of mar­i­juana. Love­land said the drugs had been in a pad­locked locker used to tem­porar­ily store evi­dence until it’s inven­to­ried and put in the department’s evi­dence room.

The offi­cer reported find­ing in Loveland’s purse a plas­tic bag with the word “evi­dence” scrib­bled on it and three grams of marijuana.

About 50 pills, two cell phones, cam­eras, a flash­light and other items that belonged to the depart­ment were found in her car, police reported.

Vance thinks the theft is an iso­lated incident.

The depart­ment is mov­ing to another build­ing, and under nor­mal cir­cum­stances theft would be more difficult.

Dis­trict Attor­ney Richard Smoth­er­mon said it doesn’t appear the alleged theft will affect any pend­ing crim­i­nal cases.

He ordered an inde­pen­dent audit of items in the evi­dence room and all related to ongo­ing cases were accounted for.

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

Tar­geted News Ser­vice
BYLINE: Tar­geted News Service

For­mer Spar­tan­burg Clerk of Court Enters Guilty Plea in Fed­eral Court

Colum­bia, SC

DATELINE: COLUMBIA, S.C.

The U.S. Jus­tice Department’s Drug Enforce­ment Administration’s Atlanta Field Office issued the fol­low­ing news release:

United States Attor­ney William N. Net­tles and Rod­ney G. Ben­son, Spe­cial Agent in Charge (SAC) of the DEA Atlanta Field Divi­sion announced today that, Mar­cus Woodrow Kitchens, of Spar­tan­burg, South Car­olina, pled guilty, as indicted, this after­noon in fed­eral court in Greenville, South Car­olina, to both counts of a fed­eral indict­ment. Count One charged con­spir­acy to pos­sess with intent to dis­tri­b­u­tion a quan­tity of a sub­stance con­tain­ing a detectible amount of metham­phet­a­mine and cocaine, a vio­la­tion of Title 21, United States Code, Sec­tion 846. Count Two charged theft from a fed­er­ally funded orga­ni­za­tion by an agent of said orga­ni­za­tion, a vio­la­tion of Title 18, United States Code, Sec­tion 666(a)(1)(A). United States Dis­trict Judge Henry M. Her­long, Jr. of Greenville accepted the plea and will impose sen­tence after he has reviewed the pre-sentence report which will be pre­pared by the U.S. Pro­ba­tion Office.

Evi­dence pre­sented at the change of plea hear­ing estab­lished that in mid-2009, an indi­vid­ual was arrested by DEA Orlando (Florida) and agreed to become a con­fi­den­tial source (CS). The CS advised inves­ti­ga­tors that he obtained the cocaine from a man from Woodruff, SC by the name of Terry Glen Lan­ford. The CS then advised inves­ti­ga­tors that Lan­ford told him that the nar­cotics were taken directly from an uniden­ti­fied law enforce­ment agency’s evi­dence locker.

Dur­ing a series of inter­views done by the DEA, Lan­ford agreed to coop­er­ate and relayed to agents that his source for the nar­cotics sup­plied to the Florida CS was Mar­cus Woodrow Kitchens, the elected Clerk of Court for Spar­tan­burg County. Lan­ford advised that Kitchens obtained nar­cotics from the evi­dence room at the Spar­tan­burg County Courthouse.

Accord­ing to Lan­ford, the CS agreed to pay $8000 for metham­phet­a­mine and cocaine that Lan­ford had obtained from Kitchens. Kitchens had taken these drugs from the evi­dence locker under his con­trol at the Spar­tan­burg County Courthouse.

Kitchens and Lan­ford agreed to meet on the morn­ing of Feb­ru­ary 2, 2010, at a Spar­tan­burg restau­rant. Lan­ford wore an elec­tronic record­ing device and the meet­ing was recorded. Dur­ing this recorded con­ver­sa­tion, Lan­ford and Kitchens dis­cussed the logis­ti­cal issues related to Kitchens remov­ing nar­cotics from the Spar­tan­burg County Cour­t­house evi­dence locker. Kitchens were arrested by DEA agents as he left the restaurant.

Agents from the Greenville FBI office joined the inves­ti­ga­tion in advance of the money exchange between Lan­ford and Kitchens. Specif­i­cally, local FBI agents along with the FBI Evi­dence Response Team worked tire­lessly with mem­bers of the Spar­tan­burg County Clerk’s Office, Solic­i­tor Trey Gowdy and his staff, and the South Car­olina Law Enforce­ment Divi­sion to imme­di­ately secure and inven­tory the evi­dence room in the Spar­tan­burg County courthouse.

USA Net­tles stated that on the drug con­spir­acy charge Kitchens faces a max­i­mum term of impris­on­ment of 20 years, a fine of $1,000,000, a three-year term of super­vised release and a $100 spe­cial assess­ment fee. Kitchens faces up to 10 years on Count 2, along with a fine of $250,000, a three-year term of super­vised release and a spe­cial assess­ment fee of $100.

The case was inves­ti­gated by the Drug Enforce­ment Admin­is­tra­tion (DEA), the Fed­eral Bureau of Inves­ti­ga­tion (FBI), and the South Car­olina Law Enforce­ment Divi­sion (SLED). Assis­tant United States Attor­neys Lance Crick and Andy Moor­man of the Greenville Office han­dled the case.

DEA Atlanta’s SAC Ben­son encour­ages par­ents, along with their chil­dren, to edu­cate them­selves about the dan­gers of legal and ille­gal drugs by vis­it­ing DEA’s inter­ac­tive web­sites at www.justhinktwice.com, www.GetSmartAboutDrugs.com and www.dea.gov.

Con­tact: Chu­valo J. Trues­dell, PIO/AFD, 404/893‑7124

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

The Edmon­ton Jour­nal edmontonjournal.com / vancouversun.com

Yel­lowknife NT CN

Edi­to­r­ial

EDMONTON — A Yel­lowknife RCMP offi­cer has been charged in con­nec­tion with money miss­ing from an evi­dence locker and threats made to fel­low officers.

Sgt. Larry O’Brien has been charged with theft under $5,000, breach of trust and forg­ing a doc­u­ment. Due to an inci­dent on June 25, O’Brien also faces a charge of utter­ing threats to five fel­low Moun­ties in Yel­lowknife. O’Brien was arrested on that charge, but has since been released.

In Jan. 2009, $2,000 went miss­ing from an evi­dence locker in the Yel­lowknife detach­ment. The money was found the next day, although an inves­ti­ga­tion was still launched.

In May 2009, when the inves­ti­ga­tion uncov­ered crim­i­nal activ­ity, RCMP offi­cers from Edmon­ton took over. The inves­ti­ga­tion was com­pleted in March, although an inter­nal inves­ti­ga­tion into the mat­ter is ongoing.

O’Brien was sus­pended from the RCMP in Feb­ru­ary 2010. He had been an RCMP offi­cer for 21 years, 13 of them in the North­west Territories.

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