IAPE Evidence Blog

San Anto­nio Express-News, METRO AND STATE NEWS; Pg. 2B
BYLINE: Guillermo X. Gar­cia, STAFF

San Anto­nio, TX

A bomb scare at the city magistrate’s office trig­gered some anx­ious moments as dozens of man­a­cled inmates were tem­porar­ily evac­u­ated from the build­ing Wednes­day evening.

The inci­dent occurred hours after a dis­grun­tled state prison inmate appar­ently mailed a white pow­dered sub­stance that proved to be non­toxic to the fed­eral cour­t­house Wednes­day morn­ing, trig­ger­ing an evac­u­a­tion of that facility.

Police said they were unsure if the inci­dents were connected.

Dur­ing the 20-minute inci­dent at the magistrate’s office shortly before 7 p.m., about 50 inmates were removed from hold­ing cells and escorted out­side to a chain-link fence enclo­sure as bomb dis­posal offi­cers entered the building.

A host of law enforce­ment offi­cers sur­rounded the inmates, most of whom were at the facil­ity in the 400 block of South Frio to have their bail set.

Besides those already in cus­tody, a hand­ful of pris­on­ers being brought to the facil­ity were kept inside police cruis­ers in the secured park­ing lot while the bomb squad inves­ti­gated. They were quickly hus­tled into the rear of the build­ing after the all-clear, said police Sgt. Mark Hubbard.

San Anto­nio police bomb dis­posal offi­cers iso­lated the device, which one super­vi­sor described as man-made, about 6 inches by 2 inches, shaped like a cylin­der with wires attached at the top.

The device was inside sus­pected stolen equip­ment in the police prop­erty room in the magistrate’s offices, Hub­bard said.

Bomb dis­posal experts were unsure what the device was, he said.

“They will take it apart or det­o­nate the device, depend­ing on what they think it may be,” Hub­bard said.

He said the device was found inside one of sev­eral boxes of elec­tron­ics that had been seized by police ear­lier in the day when they arrested two bur­glary suspects.

“There was a lot of equip­ment inside the impounded vehi­cle,” Hub­bard said. “Once police got the boxes unloaded and were going through the con­tents, they came upon this sus­pi­cious device.”

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

The Wenatchee World (Wash­ing­ton), STATE AND REGIONAL NEWS
Dis­trib­uted by McClatchy-Tribune Busi­ness News
BYLINE: Dee Riggs, The Wenatchee World, Wash.

Wenatchee, WA

Aug. 26 — EAST WENATCHEE — An offi­cial at East­mont Junior High School found a pipe bomb inside the back­pack of a 14-year-old boy who was on the school grounds Wednes­day night.

The bomb, which was described as a low-explosive device, was dis­man­tled by police and placed in the evi­dence room at the East Wenatchee police sta­tion, said Dan Reier­son, assis­tant police chief.

It was made out of PVC pipe and filled with gun­pow­der the boys had removed from .22-caliber car­tridges, Reier­son said.

The boy told offi­cers he did not intend to set it off on the school grounds but rather “in a dif­fer­ent loca­tion for fun,” Reier­son said, pos­si­bly in a vacant lot.

The boy was with two other boys, ages 14 and 15, on the grounds. All three were cited for being minors in pos­ses­sion of alco­hol, Reier­son said. The boy with the bomb in his back­pack was referred to juve­nile offi­cials for hav­ing a pro­hib­ited explo­sive device and hav­ing a dan­ger­ous weapon on school prop­erty. All three were released to their parents.

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

The Cincin­nati Enquirer (Ohio)
BYLINE: By, Quan Truong

Lin­coln Heights, OH

LINCOLN HEIGHTS — At the urg­ing of the police chief, the vil­lage of Lin­coln Heights will be pay­ing for a third party to come in and audit the police depart­ment — a cru­cial and telling move for an agency that recently fired two police sergeants in a finan­cial scandal.

Chief Ron Twitty would not elab­o­rate on the department’s prob­lems, only say­ing the sit­u­a­tion there has been “challenging.”

He sub­mit­ted a let­ter to the vil­lage man­ager in late Decem­ber, push­ing for an audit to pro­vide “a road map for the man­age­ment team of where to go from here and why.”

Ear­lier that month, the state released a spe­cial audit on Lin­coln Heights show­ing that more than $8,600 went miss­ing from the police department’s evi­dence room and bank accounts under the super­vi­sion of three for­mer police chiefs.

One of the for­mer chiefs, Earnest McCowen, was already retired. The other two, San­dra Steven­son and DeAn­gelo Sum­ler, were work­ing as police sergeants and fired in March.

Steven­son is now try­ing to get her job back, appeal­ing her ter­mi­na­tion in Hamil­ton County’s Court of Com­mon Pleas.

Argu­ments in court have been sched­uled for Oct. 19.

Steven­son claims the vil­lage fired her on the basis of the spe­cial state audit and never asked for her side of the story, accord­ing to court doc­u­ments. She alleged that she never had access to the police evi­dence room.

Steven­son couldn’t be reached for com­ment and Vil­lage Man­ager Robert Ban­nis­ter said he couldn’t talk about pend­ing litigation.

Mean­while, the vil­lage is look­ing at 15 bids rang­ing from $11,000 to just under $25,000 for the man­age­ment audit, which will take about 90 days to com­plete. The money will come from Lin­coln Heights’ police budget.

Twitty said the move is nec­es­sary, com­par­ing it to the foun­da­tion that needs to be built before con­struct­ing a house.

“If you try to change an orga­ni­za­tion, you’ll get a lot of resis­tance and push­back if peo­ple in the depart­ment don’t under­stand why you’re doing it,” he said. “Hav­ing an objec­tive, pro­fes­sional eye is more con­struc­tive than Ron Twitty com­ing in and telling peo­ple what to do.”

Vil­lage Coun­cil mem­bers will meet in Sep­tem­ber to dis­cuss the bids.

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