IAPE Evidence Blog

World­Now and KYTX, 19HD KYTX, www.cbs19.tv
Story cour­tesy of the Tyler Morn­ing Tele­graph
By KENNETH DEAN, Staff Writer
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Van Zandt County, TX

Miss­ing evi­dence inside a locker at the Van Zandt County Sheriff’s Office has resulted in an ongo­ing inves­ti­ga­tion and the arrest of a for­mer deputy.

Van Zandt County Dis­trict Attor­ney Chris Mar­tin said the inves­ti­ga­tion into Donna Still was ini­ti­ated when his First Assis­tant Dis­trict Attor­ney Richard Schmidt was hav­ing a con­ver­sa­tion with an indi­vid­ual and learned of pos­si­ble miss­ing evidence.

“We’re still inves­ti­gat­ing, but we found mul­ti­ple pieces of evi­dence in a home she used to live in that she would have had access to in her posi­tion as the evi­dence clerk with the sheriff’s office,” he said. “The evi­dence had been in her possession.”

Mar­tin said the for­mer deputy Still was arrested Wednes­day for tam­per­ing with phys­i­cal evi­dence and bond was set at $25,000.

Still made bond Wednes­day night and has been released, but offi­cials said as the inves­ti­ga­tion unfolds there could be addi­tional charges against Still.

Mar­tin said at this time his office does not have any infor­ma­tion that any­one else was involved, but they are look­ing at all possibilities.

He said Still joined the sheriff’s office in 2006 as a patrol deputy and worked as the evi­dence clerk from 2007 to 2008 before she left the department.

Mar­tin said he did not know if any cases would be affected by the discovery.

“We have yet to deter­mine if it is going to have any bear­ing on any cases, but it sure will call some into ques­tion,” he said.

Mar­tin said offi­cers are called to uphold the law, and those com­mit­ting crimes have to held accountable.

“It’s about hold­ing not only law enforce­ment, but any indi­vid­ual respon­si­ble for crimes they may have com­mit­ted,” he said.

Tyler Paper is con­tin­u­ing to fol­low this story and will have addi­tional details as they become available.

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

StarNewsOnline.com
BYLINE: Brian Freskos, Brian.Freskos@StarNewsOnline.com
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Wilm­ing­ton, NC

Phylisha Del­laPia shows some of the steps that have to be taken when rpocess­ing evi­dence at the Wilm­ing­ton Police Depart­ment. Del­laPia and her co-workers process thou­sands of pieces of evi­dence every year at the depart­ment. Photo by Ken Blevins

Most law-abiding cit­i­zens never get to han­dle mar­i­juana by the pound, plas­tic bags filled with thou­sands of ecstasy pills, blood-stained cash and AK-47 assault rifles. But for Phylisha Del­laPia, this is just another day in the office.

As one of two tech­ni­cians work­ing in the Wilm­ing­ton Police Department’s prop­erty and evi­dence ware­house, Del­laPia knows the rest­ing place of some of the city’s last-surviving rem­nants of past crimes, in some cases, from decades ago. In many ways, the 6,060-square-foot repos­i­tory in the belly of police head­quar­ters is like a pri­vate museum that tes­ti­fies to Wilmington’s darker side. Police work, after all, is not always pleas­ant business.

On one area lies the .44 cal­iber Smith & Wes­son revolver that acci­den­tally shot Bran­don Lee, Bruce Lee’s son, dur­ing the 1993 film­ing of “The Crow” in Wilm­ing­ton. In another box sits clothes, track impres­sions and pho­tographs of the scene in April 1978 when Offi­cer James Nunalee Sr. was shot and killed in an ambush out­side a con­ve­nience store on Wrightsville Avenue. Fixed along shelf E are 29 con­tain­ers with evi­dence from the city’s cold case homi­cides, items detec­tives occa­sion­ally sift through in hopes of solv­ing unan­swered cases.

These moments of Wilmington’s his­tory, told by the evi­dence that sits on those shelves, are part of what fas­ci­nates Del­laPia about her job. 

New evi­dence and recov­ered prop­erty pours into the ware­house daily, all with a story behind it. Most items are placed in heat-sealed plas­tic bags and handed to Del­laPia or her col­league, Casey Lud­lum, for stor­age. They mark each item with a bar code and store it on a shelf or on the ware­house floor, where it will stay until a case has been adju­di­cated or, in cases of found prop­erty, some­one claims it.

Cold case evi­dence, how­ever, must be kept indef­i­nitely if it con­tains poten­tial DNA.

Seized cash is only briefly kept at the depart­ment before it is deposited in a bank account. Once the case is wrapped up in court, the money is typ­i­cally trans­ferred to the local school board.

Crim­i­nal case evi­dence housed in the department’s ware­house runs the gamut from machetes and golf clubs used in assaults to pirated DVDs. Last year alone, tech­ni­cians processed 11,778 pieces of evi­dence and prop­erty, or about 981 items per month.

One box sched­uled for incin­er­a­tion later this year con­tains about 2,000 clear plas­tic balls that you can get out of a vend­ing machine at most gro­cery stores for a quar­ter. The only dif­fer­ence is that instead of a cheap plas­tic toy inside, the balls con­tained mar­i­juana, part of a drug dis­tri­b­u­tion oper­a­tion police squashed in 2008.

“This was a vice oper­a­tion,” Del­laPia said, lay­ing down a clear bag filled halfway with dark mar­i­juana seeds on the table where offi­cers pack­age their evi­dence for safekeeping.

Given the nature of what the depart­ment keeps locked in this room, offi­cials are reluc­tant to dis­cuss what kind of secu­rity fea­tures keep it pro­tected. But it might suf­fice to say that since the ware­house is inside the police depart­ment, it is sur­rounded by armed cops all hours of the day. 

It comes as lit­tle sur­prise that the tech­ni­cians, some of the few peo­ple with direct access the evi­dence, are put through a rig­or­ous screen­ing process – the depart­ment even checks their credit rat­ing – to make sure they abide by the utmost in ethics. There still exist numer­ous checks, like unan­nounced audits and over­sight from inter­nal affairs.

Progress made

Wilm­ing­ton has come a long way in the man­ner in which it pre­serves evi­dence. Prior to mov­ing into its cur­rent facil­ity in 2006, offi­cers worked out of an old rail­road build­ing turned makeshift police sta­tion on Red Cross Street. The evi­dence and prop­erty ware­house sat in what was essen­tially a base­ment never designed to house such vast amounts of sen­si­tive mate­r­ial. The result was dis­ar­ray, with boxes strewn about with lit­tle sem­blance of order.

“Stuff was every­where,” recalled Det. Lee Odham, who has served in the depart­ment for nearly 12 years.

When the police depart­ment moved to its cur­rent loca­tion on Bess Street, Del­laPia faced the daunt­ing task of restor­ing a sense of orga­ni­za­tion. She rid­ded the ware­house of evi­dence no longer needed, helped estab­lish a track­ing sys­tem so offi­cers could more effi­ciently locate items and stream­lined the paper­work process.

“She must be an angel from heaven,” Police Chief Ralph Evan­gelous said. “What is usu­ally a night­mare and an admin­is­tra­tive headache has turned into a well-run entity.”

Now, offi­cers like Odham can eas­ily pull up cases they want to re-examine. Recently, Odham paid a visit to the ware­house in order to comb through evi­dence in the case of Bar­bara Lewis, a woman stran­gled to death in 1977 and dumped in a park­ing lot in the 800 block of Princess Street. Given peren­nial advance­ments in DNA col­lec­tion, Odham scours these cases for any­thing that could be tested with new technology.

“There’s always some­thing, we just have to fig­ure out what it is and what it’s on,” he said. 

Not all police department’s oper­ate like Wilmington’s. Del­laPia, who was recently named pres­i­dent of the N.C. Asso­ci­a­tion for Prop­erty and Evi­dence, has lever­aged what she has learned to advo­cate for prop­erty and evi­dence rooms statewide, par­tic­u­larly to adopt uni­form stan­dards for sub­mit­ting and stor­ing evi­dence. And she has openly called for tech­ni­cians to be cer­ti­fied by some inde­pen­dent author­ity, a process not cur­rently required.

For Del­laPia, a jaunty, 41-year-old Car­olina native who stud­ied crim­i­nal jus­tice at Cape Fear Com­mu­nity Col­lege and the Uni­ver­sity of North Car­olina Wilm­ing­ton, work­ing in the prop­erty room affords not only an oppor­tu­nity to learn about inter­est­ing cases but to act as a detec­tive herself.

Part of her job requires track­ing down the own­ers of lost or stolen prop­erty. One of her favorite suc­cess sto­ries is the case of five antique Zippo lighters. Using a name inscribed on one of the lighters, patent num­bers, prop­erty records and a will, she located the late owner’s sur­viv­ing fam­ily in another part of the state and got the items back to them.

“I like mak­ing sure peo­ple get their stuff back,” she said. “I like when the vic­tims come pick their prop­erty up and for them to have a good expe­ri­ence about their house or car get­ting bro­ken in to.”

Brian Freskos: 343‑2327

On Twit­ter: @BrianFreskos

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

McGraw-Hill Broad­cast­ing Com­pany, TheIndyChannel.com
BYLINE: Der­rik Thomas
Link to Article

Zionsville, IN

Affi­davit: Truck May Be Linked To Improper Sale Of Stolen Car

ZIONSVILLE, Ind. — The inves­ti­ga­tion into Zionsville’s embat­tled police chief appears to be widen­ing, with detec­tives seiz­ing his department-issued vehi­cle Wednesday.

Rick Dow­den placed him­self on paid admin­is­tra­tive leave in Novem­ber fol­low­ing accu­sa­tions he stole a TV from the department’s evi­dence room and pulled a loaded, cocked gun on a group of officers.

On Wednes­day, a search war­rant was issued allow­ing state police inves­ti­ga­tors to seize and inspect Dowden’s 2010 F150 pickup truck, 6News’ Der­rik Thomas reported.

Accord­ing to the search war­rant affi­davit, inves­ti­ga­tors believe the truck may be linked to the improper sale of a stolen vehi­cle recov­ered by Zionsville police.

The depart­ment recov­ered three stolen vehi­cles in 2009, two of which were later returned to their own­ers, inves­ti­ga­tors said.

But the depart­ment seized the third, a 2007 Nis­san 350 Z, say­ing it had been involved in crim­i­nal activ­ity, and would not be released, pend­ing for­fei­ture, although inves­ti­ga­tors con­tend those state­ments were untrue, accord­ing to the affidavit.

Lib­erty Mutual Insur­ance con­firmed a $21,000 pay­out for the car and the title was trans­ferred to the town of Zionsville.

It was later sold at auc­tion for $9,147, money used as a par­tial pay­ment for Dowden’s $29,000 truck, accord­ing to the affidavit.

“I don’t know what this is about. I don’t know why they are tak­ing his vehi­cle,” Zionsville Town Man­ager Ed Mitro told 6News.

He stressed that no charges had been filed and that Dow­den, who returned to the job in Feb­ru­ary, remains the chief.

“At the moment, he is,” he said. “No com­ment has been made by the spe­cial pros­e­cu­tor rel­a­tive to the inves­ti­ga­tion and the chief. He con­tin­ues to be the chief.”

Spe­cial pros­e­cu­tor David Pow­ell would not com­ment on the case out­side of the infor­ma­tion in the affi­davit. He said the inves­ti­ga­tion is ongoing.

Zionsville offi­cials have retained a pri­vate law firm to per­form an admin­is­tra­tive review of the Police Department’s poli­cies and procedures.

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