IAPE Evidence Blog

The Okla­homan (Okla­homa City, OK), City Edi­tion, NEWS; Pg. 1A
BYLINE: KEN RAYMOND, Staff Writer

Okla­homa City, OK

OFFICIALS SAY HE’S WRONG; For­mer inves­ti­ga­tor assails OSBI

An Okla­homa State Bureau of Inves­ti­ga­tion insider has accused the agency of “incom­pe­tence, lazi­ness and fraud” in its han­dling of homi­cide cases, use of fed­eral funds and pub­li­ca­tion of crime clear­ance rates.

He says the agency has allowed mur­der sus­pects — linked to crimes by DNA, wit­nesses and other evi­dence — to wan­der free.

And he describes OSBI as an agency at war with itself, ripe with inter­nal dis­trust and con­flict between field agents and lab­o­ra­tory workers.

Kyle Eastridge, a vet­eran Okla­homa City police homi­cide detec­tive, was hired by OSBI as a cold case inves­ti­ga­tor in Jan­u­ary. He resigned July 15. 

“The OSBI is a high per­for­mance car — you’ve got the state-of-the-art crime lab, the equip­ment, all the extras — dri­ven by ama­teur dri­vers,” Eastridge told The Okla­homan. “I blame the lead­er­ship. I hope the OSBI Com­mis­sion will really inves­ti­gate what’s going on there and get some­one com­pe­tent in place.”

Jes­sica Brown, OSBI spokes­woman, said Eastridge is mis­in­formed. She said the cases he cited are in the hands of dis­trict attor­neys, not the OSBI.

The com­mis­sion, a seven-member board over­see­ing the agency, is expected to name an interim direc­tor Tues­day to suc­ceed A. DeWade Lan­g­ley, who has accepted a posi­tion at the Uni­ver­sity of Cen­tral Okla­homa. The com­mis­sion is plan­ning a nation­wide search for his per­ma­nent successor.

Lan­g­ley can­celed an inter­view with The Okla­homan last week after review­ing a list of top­ics reporters wanted to dis­cuss with him. He addressed some of the issues in a letter.

Stan­ley Glanz, Tulsa County sher­iff and com­mis­sion vice chair, said: “I think some of the crit­i­cism is unde­served. They have a lot of dif­fi­cult cases they’re work­ing with. … They do the best they can with the funds they are given and the agents they have.”

OSBI agents inves­ti­gate some of the state’s high­est pro­file crimes, par­tic­u­larly those which occur out­side of major met­ro­pol­i­tan areas. Because the agency has lit­tle orig­i­nal juris­dic­tion, most OSBI inves­ti­ga­tions are done at the request of local law enforcement.

OSBI also pro­vides sup­port oper­a­tions for other agen­cies, includ­ing advanced foren­sics work used by pros­e­cu­tors in vio­lent crime cases. Assets include a $30 mil­lion crime lab in Edmond.

Eastridge alleges that:

OSBI case agents failed to make arrests in at least four homi­cides, despite DNA matches and other evi­dence point­ing to iden­ti­fied suspects.

Among those cases is the 1982 death of Wil­fredo Oso­rio. An Okla­homa County pros­e­cu­tor was will­ing to file charges seven years ago, but the case dis­ap­peared into OSBI’s bureau­cratic “limbo” and noth­ing was done, Eastridge said. Another case has lan­guished for five years.

Eastridge blamed the alleged lapses on lazi­ness and insuf­fi­cient supervision.

“Peo­ple don’t want to fol­low through on things because it’s a has­sle. … I really don’t see how you can jus­tify that men­tal­ity when you’re deal­ing with the biggest hurt some­one can be dealt in their life: the loss of a loved one,” he said. “But they do it anyway.”

Okla­homa County Dis­trict Attor­ney David Prater said his office does not have the Oso­rio case.

“The infor­ma­tion we have is that the assis­tant DA who screened the case sent it back (to OSBI) for more work, and from all our records and research, it never made it back to our office,” he said.

OSBI’s 2009 homi­cide clear­ance rate of 83.7 per­cent is inac­cu­rate.
“It’s totally bogus,” Eastridge said. “They were declar­ing those num­bers as fact while they were still gath­er­ing the infor­ma­tion from all the field offices.”

The OSBI announced its homi­cide clear­ance rates at a news con­fer­ence in April. At the time, the agency was being crit­i­cized by a leg­is­la­tor and the FBI over the way it han­dled the Aja John­son inves­ti­ga­tion. Aja, 7, was abducted by her step­fa­ther, who killed her and then himself.

The 83.7 per­cent fig­ure was the five-year low. The high was in 2005, when OSBI cleared 96 per­cent of its homi­cide and sus­pi­cious death cases.

Eastridge and a num­ber of other sources have ques­tioned the accu­racy of OSBI’s numbers.

“The national aver­age used to be around 65 per­cent,” Eastridge said. “It was always con­sid­ered pretty good if you could get a clear­ance rate a lit­tle over the national aver­age. They’re say­ing their clear­ance rates are in the 80 and 90 per­cents. It’s absurd.”

OSBI’s inves­tiga­tive divi­sion is strug­gling with the well-funded foren­sic sci­ence divi­sion for con­trol of the agency.

“One of the first things that any­body said to me when I started work­ing around the lab was, ‘The agents hate us, and we think it’s funny,’ ” Eastridge said.

Field agents are frus­trated by how long it takes to get evi­dence processed by the lab, he said.

In his let­ter to The Okla­homan, Lan­g­ley said there is no schism within OSBI.

“Con­cern­ing alleged divi­sive­ness at the agency between lab per­son­nel and field agents, it is just that — alleged,” he wrote. “These are sep­a­rate divi­sions under one agency. Each divi­sion has its own exper­tise all work­ing together to seek jus­tice. These divi­sions work closely on many cases and work well.”

Eastridge was an Okla­homa City police offi­cer for almost 25 years and spent the lat­ter por­tion of his career inves­ti­gat­ing homi­cides and cold cases. He and his part­ner helped close some of the city’s most noto­ri­ous unsolved cases, includ­ing the grisly 1989 mur­der of Audrey Har­ris and the 1986 abduc­tion and killing of Kathy Sue Engle.

“He’s very knowl­edge­able,” said Cris Cun­ning­ham, a homi­cide detec­tive who worked with Eastridge for eight years. “He’s always will­ing to work the case. He does a heck of a job. He’s really tenacious.”

He retired early in order to take a spe­cial inves­ti­ga­tor posi­tion in OSBI’s newly cre­ated cold case unit. The unit is funded by a National Insti­tute of Jus­tice grant.

“Eastridge’s job as pro­vided in the grant was to locate DNA evi­dence, col­lect it from law enforce­ment offices across the state, and sub­mit it for test­ing at the OSBI lab,” Lan­g­ley said in his let­ter. “After test­ing, if a DNA pro­file was matched in CODIS (a national DNA data­base), an inves­ti­ga­tor would then begin his work.

“Under the specifics of the grant, inves­ti­ga­tors would not start until a match was made. He was clearly frus­trated as an inves­ti­ga­tor oper­at­ing under these restric­tions. The absolute neces­sity to strictly adhere to the terms of the grant is far more impor­tant than pla­cat­ing the desires of an indi­vid­ual investigator.”

But Eastridge said the grant was mis­man­aged from the begin­ning. Money was wasted, he said, on cases that were past the statute of limitations.

“There was no pri­or­ity given to these lim­ited fed­eral dol­lars,” he said. “It costs $500 to $1,000 to run a DNA test. Why waste it on cases you can never pros­e­cute when you have cases that you can? Mur­ders and sex­ual assaults should be the top pri­or­ity, but they were given equal pri­or­ity with second-degree bur­glar­ies, peep­ing toms and rape cases that can never be prosecuted.”

A rou­tine fed­eral audit of the grant was to begin Fri­day. Eastridge said he has con­tacted the Jus­tice Depart­ment and offered his assistance.

“The audit will deter­mine if funds are being used appro­pri­ately,” he said. “If not, they won’t get a renewed grant. I think OSBI needs this grant to help the fam­i­lies of the vic­tims, but they can’t afford to squan­der it.”

CONTRIBUTING: Staff writ­ers Michael Baker and John Estus 

AT A GLANCE
Kyle Eastridge

Eastridge, 46, lives with his fam­ily in Tuttle.

He joined the Okla­homa City Police Depart­ment in March 1985. He had a vari­ety of assign­ments, includ­ing stints in patrol, air sup­port, nar­cotics, lar­ceny, assault and homi­cide. Before retir­ing in late 2009, he spent three years inves­ti­gat­ing cold cases.

He inves­ti­gated hun­dreds of vio­lent crimes and made hun­dreds of arrests.

On Jan. 4, Eastridge began work as a spe­cial inves­ti­ga­tor in the Okla­homa State Bureau of Investigation’s new cold case unit. He resigned July 15.

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

States News Ser­vice
BYLINE: States News Ser­vice
DATELINE: ST. THOMAS, VI 

St. Croix, Vir­gin Islands

The fol­low­ing infor­ma­tion was released by the Vir­gin Islands Police Department:

Com­mis­sioner Nov­elle E. Fran­cis, Jr. show­cased the VI Police Department’s new crime analy­sis and evi­dence stor­age facil­ity on Wednes­day, July 21. The facil­ity is “unmatched any­where in the Caribbean,” accord­ing to St. Croix Deputy Chief Christo­pher How­ell . Gov­er­nor John de Jongh , St. Croix Police Chief Oak­land Benta , foren­sic detec­tives and a slew of media accom­pa­nied Fran­cis and How­ell on the walk through. 

Access to the 6,000 square foot facil­ity is gained through bio­met­ric fin­ger­print scan. All unau­tho­rized fin­ger­prints are recorded and any attempt by unau­tho­rized per­sons to access the facil­ity will be inves­ti­gated. A closed cam­era sys­tem mon­i­tors all access points and all sec­tions of the facil­ity. Inside, sep­a­rate rooms are des­ig­nated for bal­lis­tic test­ing and trac­ing, rais­ing oblit­er­ated ser­ial num­bers off firearms, rais­ing latent fin­ger­prints off evi­dence, fin­ger­print analy­sis and pro­cess­ing and stor­ing evi­dence. To pre­serve evi­dence that needs to be refrig­er­ated there are two indus­trial grade units which sound an alarm if the tem­per­a­ture goes below a cer­tain level. Bio­met­ric scans are required to access each sec­tion and in the case of the most secure vault, two per­sons simul­ta­ne­ously must enter parts of a code to gain access.

The facil­ity was bud­geted $500k and will be com­pleted at least 100k under bud­get said How­ell, who’s hands-on approach in over­see­ing the ren­o­va­tions, equip­ment pur­chas­ing and final set up was the dri­ving force behind the com­ple­tion of the crime lab. Work on the facil­ity began 14 months ago and is sched­uled to be com­pleted in about three months. A sim­i­lar project is under­way on St. Thomas and is just a few months behind. That facil­ity was also funded at 50K.

The ren­o­va­tion cor­rects 30 years of prob­lems in evi­dence stor­age and brings the depart­ment into the fore­front of crime scene inves­ti­ga­tion tech­nol­ogy. The US Inte­rior Depart­ment con­ducted three audits in the last 20 years detail­ing prob­lems and out­lin­ing rec­om­men­da­tions to cor­rect the issues. Three for­mer com­mis­sion­ers called for the audits, hop­ing to get the sup­port to make the changes.

The facil­ity con­forms to stan­dards set by the Inter­na­tional Asso­ci­a­tion for Prop­erty and Evi­dence (IAPE). Accord­ing to the IAPE web­site, “adher­ing to these stan­dards should assure any agency that rea­son­able steps have been taken to obtain a secure and effi­cient prop­erty and evi­dence man­age­ment system.”

Com­mis­sioner Fran­cis said, under the de Jongh admin­is­tra­tion, the funds were allo­cated and the work finally began.

“Within the police depart­ment I made sure this project remained a pri­or­ity. This project will go a long way to increase pub­lic trust in the police depart­ment, now that we have a mod­ern crime lab and evi­dence stor­age capa­bil­i­ties,” Com­mis­sioner Fran­cis said.

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

NORTH COUNTRY GAZETTE, northcountrygazette.org
Link to Article

Mid­dle­town, NY

MIDDLETOWN — The police department’s prop­erty and evi­dence pol­icy needs improve­ment because it did not require any writ­ten pro­ce­dures for han­dling and stor­ing prop­erty and evi­dence, accord­ing to a report released by New York State Comp­trol­ler Thomas P. DiNapoli.

In addi­tion, the police depart­ment failed to deposit cash with the city finance depart­ment in a timely manner.

“It’s the police department’s respon­si­bil­ity to pro­tect the com­mu­nity and ensure tax­payer dol­lars are being used prop­erly,” said DiNapoli. “Unfor­tu­nately, the Mid­dle­town police depart­ment did not make timely cash deposits, and did not have proper pro­ce­dures in place for han­dling and stor­ing prop­erty and evi­dence. There is room for improve­ment in these areas.”

In the nor­mal course of oper­a­tions, the depart­ment receives or seizes cash, vehi­cles, firearms and con­trolled sub­stances, referred to as prop­erty and evi­dence. The department’s 2008 Annual Report indi­cated that its nar­cotics unit seized cash in the amount of $81,940, nar­cotics with an esti­mated street value of $222,630, at least two firearms and four vehicles.

The department’s prop­erty and evi­dence pol­icy needs improve­ment because it does not require any writ­ten pro­ce­dures for han­dling and stor­ing prop­erty and evi­dence. In addi­tion, dis­crep­an­cies existed in the man­ual and com­put­er­ized cash records.

DiNapoli’s audi­tors also found that a phys­i­cal inven­tory was not com­pleted, cash items were not deposited timely, dis­pos­als were not removed from com­put­er­ized track­ing soft­ware and doc­u­men­ta­tion to sup­port expen­di­tures of drug seizure funds was inadequate.

Click Here for a Copy of the Audit

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