IAPE Evidence Blog

Orlando Sen­tinel, orlandosentinel.com
BYLINE: Henry Pier­son Cur­tis, Orlando Sentinel

Win­der­mere, FL

Photo of the Win­der­mere evi­dence room. Win­der­mere Police Depart­ment, Win­der­mere Police Depart­ment / March 22, 2011

Evi­dence lock­ers, where guns, money and drugs are stored, were in dis­ar­ray, state finds.

Guns, drugs and money rou­tinely dis­ap­peared in recent years from the evi­dence locker at Win­der­mere Police Depart­ment, a Florida Depart­ment of Law Enforce­ment audit has found.

The exten­sive, sys­tem­atic loss of evi­dence is the lat­est devel­op­ment in a cor­rup­tion scan­dal that has soiled Cen­tral Florida’s wealth­i­est com­mu­nity since Police Chief Daniel Saylor’s arrest in Jan­u­ary on charges of block­ing a child rape investigation.

“We are doing every­thing we can to assist the Win­der­mere Police Depart­ment in locat­ing the guns that are unac­counted for,” FDLE Assis­tant Spe­cial Agent in Charge Danny Banks said Tues­day after­noon. “The extreme num­ber of miss­ing items is almost unheard of – we have frankly never seen any­thing this fla­grant before.”

Within hours of the audit’s release Tues­day, Say­lor was charged with six new felonies unre­lated to the miss­ing evi­dence. The charges — which include bribery of a pub­lic ser­vant and solic­i­ta­tion to tam­per with evi­dence — accuse Say­lor of tak­ing added mea­sures to cover up the blocked rape inves­ti­ga­tion. Say­lor was not re-arrested; but he must be arraigned on the new charges.

The total num­ber of miss­ing guns remains under inves­ti­ga­tion. But records show 43 guns were miss­ing along with at least $3,771 in cash, small amounts of cocaine and mar­i­juana and more than 100 pills of oxy­codone, a widely abused painkiller.

The audit was done at the request of Win­der­mere Police Chief Mike McCoy, who dis­cov­ered the mess in the evi­dence room after he was hired last month to replace Saylor.

McCoy on Tues­day told the Orlando Sen­tinel that the audit is another step in rebuild­ing the police department’s reputation.

“Some offi­cers have already decided to leave and I am quite pleased with the qual­ity of the appli­cant pool we’re start­ing to see,” he said. “The next step is to rebuild the esprit de corps that gives the town the pro­fes­sional, reli­able ser­vice they can count on.”

In a let­ter to McCoy dated Mon­day, FDLE Spe­cial Agent in Charge Joyce Daw­ley said that her agency’s audit uncov­ered major prob­lems with how Win­der­mere police han­dle evi­dence, and that FDLE inves­ti­ga­tors found sev­eral items of evi­dence that “can­not be accounted for” at this time.

“Prob­lems involv­ing basic doc­u­men­ta­tion, stor­age facil­i­ties, and secu­rity of sen­si­tive evi­dence have led to a lack of account­abil­ity,” Daw­ley wrote.

All items seized by police agen­cies are sup­posed to be bagged, tagged and cat­a­logued in locked stor­age as evi­dence until destroyed or returned by court order.

Ear­lier this month, Win­der­mere offi­cials acknowl­edged that town records in gen­eral were poorly stored and orga­nized. Three per­son­nel files, for instance, dis­ap­peared last year from the for­mer police chief’s locked office.

Nei­ther Say­lor nor his lawyer, Mark NeJame of Orlando, could be reached for com­ment Tuesday.

Agents con­duct­ing the audit con­cluded Win­der­mere police did not fol­low basic pro­ce­dures for stor­ing, doc­u­ment­ing and secur­ing evi­dence. Besides dis­cov­er­ing miss­ing items, the agents found more than 150 pieces of evi­dence includ­ing a semi-automatic machine pis­tol and four more guns in the evi­dence locker with­out any paper­work link­ing them to a crime, record show.

Records were so shoddy that in double-checking their audit, FDLE con­tacted the Orange County Sheriff’s Office and found Win­der­mere turned over about 20 of the 43 miss­ing guns for destruc­tion with­out any paperwork.

That leaves about 20 miss­ing guns that may be on the street.

“This report shows the com­plete lack of over­sight, account­abil­ity and man­age­ment of our for­mer police chief,” Win­der­mere Mayor Gary Bruhn said after read­ing FDLE’s descrip­tion of the record-keeping nightmare.

The biggest con­cern is that some­one in the police depart­ment stole the guns, sold them on the street where they may turn up in rob­beries or murders.

“That’s what scares me,” Bruhn said. “We will never know.”

FDLE is check­ing statewide to deter­mine if any of the miss­ing weapons has been recov­ered at crime scenes. Banks appealed for help, say­ing, “if any­one in the com­mu­nity has infor­ma­tion on recov­er­ing some of these guns, please con­tact FDLE.”

Windermere’s evi­dence room is a con­verted closet mea­sur­ing 9-feet-long by 4-feet-wide.

Some­how, offi­cers packed it from floor to ceil­ing with dozens of con­fis­cated firearms, lap­tops, swords, clubs, beer kegs, bongs and car­tons of evi­dence logged in crim­i­nal cases. Unlike proper evi­dence vaults, Win­der­mere did not have sep­a­rate safes for stor­ing guns, drugs and cash.

“I ordered the locks changed today,” said McCoy, who is issu­ing just one key and restrict­ing access to one sergeant. “I’m ren­der­ing our prop­erty and evi­dence room inac­tive for the next six months.”

Win­ter Gar­den police have agreed to store evi­dence col­lected by Win­der­mere in the next six months while the agency straight­ens out its operations.

While the evi­dence room had three keys in recent years, McCoy pointed out that any­one could climb into the evi­dence room by remov­ing a hang­ing ceil­ing tile from an adja­cent hallway.

If the miss­ing items turn out to be stolen, cur­rent or for­mer police offi­cers would be the likely sus­pects as only they and one or two non-sworn employ­ees had access to the police offices. Turnover of dis­grun­tled offi­cers dur­ing Saylor’s tenure became so com­mon he said he installed an elec­tronic lock­ing sys­tem to keep from replac­ing the department’s key locks.

FDLE offi­cer cer­ti­fi­ca­tion records show more than 40 offi­cers joined and left the police depart­ment dur­ing Saylor’s nine years as police chief.

Win­der­mere police first came under scrutiny in Novem­ber 2009 fol­low­ing Tiger Woods’ crash in the nearby gated com­mu­nity of Isle­worth. While not within Windermere’s juris­dic­tion, two town police offi­cers arrived first at the crash scene and one was accused later of sell­ing pho­tos of the golfer’s dam­aged SUV to a celebrity website.

In May 2010, the Orlando Sen­tinel reported that Win­der­mere was known through­out Cen­tral Florida law enforce­ment for hir­ing “second-chance” offi­cers fired or forced to resign from other police agen­cies. Nearly half of Windermere’s 24 offi­cers, includ­ing Say­lor, joined the depart­ment under those circumstances.

Since Saylor’s arrest in Jan­u­ary and sub­se­quent fir­ing, three other Win­der­mere offi­cers have resigned or been dis­missed. More offi­cers are expected to leave in com­ing weeks after FDLE com­pletes its inves­ti­ga­tion of the depart­ment, accord­ing to cur­rent and for­mer officers.

Say­lor was charged on Jan. 12 with unlaw­ful com­pen­sa­tion for offi­cial behav­ior and offi­cial mis­con­duct. He is accused of shut­ting down rape inves­ti­ga­tions involv­ing two girls to help Scott Bush, 50, of Win­der­mere, who was charged the same day with cap­i­tal sex­ual bat­tery of a per­son under 12 and sex­ual touch­ing of a per­son under 12 years of age.

Windermere’s Cor­rup­tion Scandal

Jan. 12: Win­der­mere Police Chief Daniel Say­lor arrested on charges of unlaw­ful com­pen­sa­tion for offi­cial behav­ior and offi­cial mis­con­duct related to an accused cover-up of a rape inves­ti­ga­tion of two Win­der­mere girls.

His friend, Scott Bush of Win­der­mere, is charged with cap­i­tal sex­ual bat­tery of a per­son under 12 and sex­ual touch­ing of a per­son under 12 years of age.

Jan. 25: Say­lor fired after the Orlando Sen­tinel reports he had tried to cover-up his forced res­ig­na­tion from the Florida Police Chiefs Asso­ci­a­tion a year ear­lier with­out telling Win­der­mere officials.

Feb. 7: For­mer Orlando Police Chief Mike McCoy hired to replace Saylor.

Feb. 11: Lt. Paul Con­way, Saylor’s top aide, resigns and promises to tes­tify against Saylor.

Feb. 17: McCoy orders all offi­cers to undergo new crim­i­nal back­ground checks.

Mar. 9: Say­lor accused of accept­ing $1,000 bribe to hire a police offi­cer fac­ing loss of cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, accord­ing to FDLE records.

Mar. 15: McCoy offers to re-investigate any cases res­i­dents think were mis­han­dled by Saylor.

March 21: FDLE audit of evi­dence room at Win­der­mere Police Depart­ment finds dozens of guns unac­counted for as well as cash and drugs.

hcurtis@tribune.com or 407 – 420-5257

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