IAPE Evidence Blog

The Jour­nal, mobile.journal-news.net
Link to Article

Berke­ley County, WV

A betrayal of the pub­lic trust.

For the gen­eral pub­lic, a betrayal of the pub­lic trust is the most seri­ous accu­sa­tion result­ing from the case against for­mer Berke­ley County Sheriff’s Depart­ment Cpl. Christo­pher McCulley.

Sadly, the pub­lic can’t decide who com­mit­ted the greater betrayal: McCul­ley, who stole drugs from the sheriff’s evi­dence room, or Berke­ley County Pros­e­cut­ing Attor­ney Pamela Games-Neely, who closed the case with a no-contest plea and a $5 fine plus court costs.

The Jour­nal is cer­tain of one thing: The actions of both McCul­ley and Games-Neely allow the pub­lic to ques­tion the integrity of our law enforce­ment community.

McCul­ley was sworn to uphold the law when he stole nine oxy­codone pills from the sheriff’s evi­dence room. That action erodes the rep­u­ta­tion of all law enforce­ment officers.

Games-Neely, by her expla­na­tion of the charge against McCul­ley, almost dares the pub­lic to ques­tion the integrity of her office.

“That’s the illu­sion that every­body has that there was this big felony here. There is no felony. There was a mis­de­meanor. He stole pills. He stole nine of them. The street value was less than $180,” Games-Neely said.

The Jour­nal doubts the pub­lic real­ized that the street value of the pills taken would be the decid­ing fac­tor in fil­ing charges against an expe­ri­enced deputy who stole a con­trolled sub­stance from the sheriff’s evi­dence locker. Some­how, it seems other fac­tors — the theft, the ille­gal pos­ses­sion of a con­trolled sub­stance, the destroy­ing of evi­dence in a crim­i­nal case — might have been considered.

The han­dling of this case has been ques­tion­able from the begin­ning. Why didn’t an out­side agency han­dle the case? Why didn’t an out­side agency inven­tory the evi­dence room to look for addi­tional thefts?

And now this: a no-contest plea, $5 fine and court costs. It only adds insult to injury when you real­ize that McCul­ley con­fessed to the crime and the prosecutor’s office ended up with a no-contest plea, not a guilty plea.

Court and law enforce­ment offi­cials are expected to serve and pro­tect the pub­lic. In this case, it’s easy to think they pro­tect their own first.

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

9 Wants to Know, www.9news.com
BYLINE: Deborah.Sherman, Deborah.Sherman@9NEWS.com.
Link to Arti­cle
One Video

Broom­field, CO

BROOMFIELD — E-mails from Broomfield’s police chief and city coun­cil mem­bers show they’re blam­ing the media for report­ing about their prob­lems and try­ing to find and pun­ish the per­son who leaked memos about lost evi­dence and years of mis­man­age­ment inside the prop­erty and evi­dence room. The e-mails also show the chief took steps to address the prob­lems only after 9Wants to Know ques­tioned him about the miss­ing items.

“I cer­tainly hope you are able to dis­cover who had access to inter­nal memos and who leaked them to press and that appro­pri­ate action can be taken,” City Coun­cil­woman Linda Reynolds wrote on Feb. 8 to Police Chief Tom Deland. “I want you to know that per­son­ally I have all the con­fi­dence in you and your depart­ment and that this dis­tor­tion is trash news.”

“I have no idea why one of our own would bring dis­credit upon all the hard work­ing and brave mem­bers of our depart­ment,” Deland wrote in an e-mail Feb. to all police officers.

City Man­ager George Di Ciero told 9NEWS on Feb. 16 that it’s not city pol­icy to look for the peo­ple who released the audit to 9NEWS.

How­ever, in an e-mail to the city coun­cil, Deland wrote, “At this time, it is unknown exactly how 9NEWS obtained a copy of the con­fi­den­tial inter­nal audit. If that infor­ma­tion is even­tu­ally obtained, appro­pri­ate action will be taken.”

Ear­lier this month, a 9Wants to Know inves­ti­ga­tion released the results of inter­nal memos and an audit that found there were 15,000 pieces of old evi­dence that could be destroyed, there were sev­eral hun­dred data entry errors for track­ing evi­dence and prop­erty, and that there were 257 pieces of evi­dence miss­ing or unable to locate.

The audi­tor found the account­abil­ity for the evi­dence was unac­cept­able and found a “pat­tern of prob­lems” in the room. Experts told 9NEWS evi­dence must be han­dled with care to main­tain a “chain of cus­tody” for court cases.

Per­son­nel records show the two evi­dence tech­ni­cians in charge of the room had repeat­edly been ranked “pro­fi­cient” or aver­age or “below-standard” in areas crit­i­cal to man­age­ment and orga­ni­za­tion. Yet, the chief kept them in their cur­rent posi­tions with­out any dis­ci­pli­nary action.

E-mails show the chief made sev­eral changes only after he real­ized the story was going to be broad­cast on 9NEWS.

After inter­views with 9NEWS, “Chief Deland reas­signed a sergeant on a full-time basis to work in the prop­erty and evi­dence room and observe and mon­i­tor the pro­ce­dures,” Di Ciero wrote to the city coun­cil. “Chief Deland also requested the city’s newly appointed direc­tor of per­for­mance and inter­nal audit to con­duct a process audit of the prop­erty room.”

The chief ini­ti­ated per­for­mance eval­u­a­tions and improve­ment mea­sures and con­tacted the 17th Judi­cial Dis­trict Attor­ney about the miss­ing evi­dence after learn­ing about the 9NEWS inves­ti­ga­tion, accord­ing to the e-mails.

Two audits of the evi­dence and prop­erty room were launched after the news cov­er­age. One audit is an over­all audit con­ducted by the city’s inde­pen­dent audi­tors who will report to the mayor and city coun­cil. The sec­ond audit will be con­ducted by the city and county’s inter­nal audi­tor and will be reported to the manager.

The man­ager was very crit­i­cal of the media for broad­cast­ing the city’s prob­lems, accord­ing to e-mails.

“Here is a clas­sic exam­ple of “if it bleeds, it leads,” Di Ciero wrote on Feb. 6. “This must really be a down time for real news, so they want to cre­ate some. This is patently disgusting.”

Of the miss­ing items, the police chief says 93 are still miss­ing and 162 of them have been accounted for, accord­ing to Deland.

He says 45 items were found in the room which had been mis­placed in one of the stor­age areas. 117 items were accounted for by review­ing hand­writ­ten logs that doc­u­mented the proper dis­po­si­tion of the prop­erty. Of the 93 items still miss­ing, the chief says he sus­pects data entry mis­takes are to blame and says per­son­nel are still try­ing to track down the items.

Of the mis­man­aged evi­dence, 45 items belonged to felony cases and 29 were mis­de­meanor or traf­fic cases, accord­ing to the 17th Judi­cial Dis­trict office. No crim­i­nal case out­comes were impacted as a result of the destroyed or miss­ing evidence.

If you have any news tips or story ideas, please e-mail Inves­tiga­tive Reporter Deb­o­rah Sher­man at Deborah.Sherman@9NEWS.com.

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

The Asso­ci­ated Press State & Local Wire, STATE AND REGIONAL

Con­tra Costa County, CA

A state nar­cotics agent who has over­seen hun­dreds of drug inves­ti­ga­tions is now him­self in jail on sus­pi­cion of con­spir­ing to sell drugs stolen from an evi­dence locker. 

Author­i­ties say Nor­man Wielsch, who headed a drug task force in Con­tra Costa County, was arrested Wednes­day along with Christo­pher But­ler, a well-known pri­vate investigator.

The state Bureau of Nar­cotics Enforce­ment says Wielsch and But­ler, both 49, were booked into Con­tra Costa County Jail in Mar­tinez on a vari­ety of sus­pected felony offenses, includ­ing sell­ing mar­i­juana, metham­phet­a­mine and steroids.

Wielsch’s attor­ney, Michael Car­doza said Thurs­day his client is dev­as­tated and plans to “meet the alle­ga­tions head-on.”

Butler’s inves­ti­ga­tion firm, But­ler and Asso­ci­a­tions, did not imme­di­ately respond to requests for com­ment Thursday.

The two men pre­vi­ously worked together as police offi­cers in Antioch.

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