IAPE Evidence Blog

Alabama Live LLC., blog.al.com
BYLINE: Kathy Jumper, Press-Register
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Gulf Shores, AL

Gulf Shores police civil­ian employee Barry Mar­tin was arrested for allegedly steal­ing from the Police Department’s evi­dence room, accord­ing to law enforec­ment offi­cials today.

GULF SHORES, Alabama — A 58-year-old civil­ian employee of the Gulf Shores Police Depart­ment has been arrested for allegedly steal­ing guns, elec­tron­ics and pre­scrip­tion drugs from the agency’s evi­dence room, law enforce­ment offi­cials said today.

Barry Mar­tin of Gulf Shores remained in the Bald­win County Cor­rec­tions Cen­ter, charged with one count of second-degree theft of prop­erty and one count of unlaw­ful pos­ses­sion of a con­trolled sub­stance, accord­ing to Gulf Shores police Chief Ed Delmore.

Mar­tin has been placed on admin­is­tra­tive leave and ter­mi­na­tion pro­ceed­ings are in progress, accord­ing to Lt. Bill Cowan, Gulf Shores police spokesman.

“We’re not talk­ing about a num­ber of employ­ees,” Del­more said. “This is one employee who did some­thing very egre­gious. And some­one who we were com­pletely sur­prised by. This is a real kick in the teeth to us. But it should not reflect on the entire agency filled with ded­i­cated professionals.”

Mar­tin has been employed with the Police Depart­ment since 1999 as a deten­tion offi­cer and in July 2010 was also made the cus­to­dian of the evi­dence room. In a joint inves­ti­ga­tion by Gulf Shores police, the Bald­win County Sheriff’s Office and the Dis­trict Attorney’s Office, Mar­tin was arrested five days after the local police were noti­fied of the poten­tial dis­crep­an­cies in the evi­dence room, accord­ing to Delmore.

About 100 or fewer cases could be affected by the thefts, and the Dis­trict Attorney’s Office is review­ing the files and cases to com­pare items to what was seized, accord­ing to Dis­trict Attor­ney Hal­lie Dixon. “We’re start­ing with the drug cases. There are 11 Gulf Shores drug cases pend­ing and all have been indicted. We have addi­tional cases pend­ing” that have not been indicted.

Maj. Anthony Low­ery of the Sheriff’s Office said the case does not involve the drug task force cases since those are han­dled through the Sheriff’s Office in Robertsdale. 

The Bald­win County Sheriff’s Office exe­cuted a search war­rant at Martin’s res­i­dence Fri­day, Jan. 27, 2011, and recov­ered numer­ous guns and nar­cotics that had been stolen from the Gulf Shores Police Depart­ment evi­dence room.
 
 

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

The Salt Lake Tri­bune, sltrib.com
BYLINE: Melinda Rogers, The Salt Lake Tri­bune
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Bland­ing, UT

Four men who stole nine hand­guns from the Bland­ing Police Depart­ment in August have pleaded guilty to their crimes in U.S. Dis­trict Court.

The guns were taken from the depart­ment dur­ing a bur­glary and dis­cov­ered on Aug. 22, when a Utah High­way Patrol trooper stopped a vehi­cle and found two of the firearms, accord­ing to court documents.

Inves­ti­ga­tors later found the remain­ing guns with the var­i­ous defen­dants. Charged with felony pos­ses­sion of a firearm in fed­eral court were: Matthew Ryan Dud­ley, of Wash­ing­ton, 21; Thomas Richard Dale Goatz, of Enoch, 22; Nathan Scott Hol­l­i­day, of Cedar City, 21; and 22-year-old Wes­ley Plex­ico, of Cedar City.

All recently entered guilty pleas in fed­eral court after reach­ing agree­ment with fed­eral pros­e­cu­tors, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Salt Lake City announced Tuesday.

All face up to 10 years in prison when sen­tenced in March and April.

Plex­ico, who was con­victed of pos­sess­ing stolen guns in 2009 and sen­tenced to 30 months in fed­eral prison, was on super­vised release when he police arrested him on his lat­est gun charge.

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

NewburyportNews.com, newburyportnews.com
BYLINE: Angel­jean Chiaramida Staff writer
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Sal­is­bury, MA

L’Esperance’s lawyer requests consultant’s ‘audit’ of evi­dence room

CHELSEA — The theft case against for­mer Sal­is­bury police chief David L’Esperance has been con­tin­ued to next month so both the pros­e­cu­tor and defense attor­ney can obtain an inde­pen­dent report that indi­cates that no money, drugs or other evi­dence were taken from the Sal­is­bury Police Department’s evi­dence room improp­erly dur­ing his tenure.

The con­tin­u­ance was requested yes­ter­day by L’Esperance’s lawyer, Ger­ard LaFlamme Jr., and agreed to by Ben­jamin Gold­berger, the Suf­folk County spe­cial pros­e­cu­tor han­dling the case since it was trans­ferred from Essex County to elim­i­nate the pos­si­bil­ity of a con­flict of interest.

The exis­tence of the report came to the atten­tion of LaFlamme on Thurs­day, when he read a story about it pub­lished in The Daily News, he said.

The report was writ­ten by inde­pen­dent con­sul­tant Bruce Mac­Dougall, of Munic­i­pal Resources Inc. A retired police chief from Methuen, Mac­Dougall was hired by the town of Sal­is­bury to under­take a review of a num­ber of issues after L’Esperance’s depar­ture last year under a cloud of mis­con­duct alle­ga­tions. MacDougall’s review was con­ducted last sum­mer and his report released to select­men in Octo­ber. The Daily News requested a copy of the report ear­lier this month.

Gold­berger told Chelsea Dis­trict Court Judge James Wexler that although he knew “an audit” of the evi­dence room was done, he didn’t know of the Mac­Dougall report until LaFlamme showed him the news­pa­per story in the court­room that morn­ing, right before court began.

LaFlamme said that the Mac­Dougall report showed noth­ing was miss­ing from the Sal­is­bury evi­dence room.

“The alle­ga­tions (in the theft charges) are that my client removed things from the evi­dence room,” LaFlamme said. “Since the (Daily News) pub­lished (a story on it), I think my client is enti­tled to (a copy of the report).”

Gold­berger told the judge that after read­ing the story that morn­ing, he placed a call to the Sal­is­bury Police Depart­ment to get a copy.

Wexler advised both Gold­berger and LaFlamme that they may find it help­ful to speak with Salisbury’s town coun­sel to ensure that the case is not delayed fur­ther over sim­i­lar instances.

“I’m stunned the (pros­e­cu­tor) was not pro­vided with a copy of the Mac­Dougall report,” LaFlamme said after the hear­ing con­cluded. “But it’s a reflec­tion on the attacks against Dave L’Esperance.”

The Mac­Dougall study’s con­clu­sions dis­pelled some of the accu­sa­tions made against L’Esperance, 51, in a highly pub­li­cized report released last year. That 31-page report, writ­ten by Robert St. Pierre and released last Jan­u­ary, accused L’Esperance of 15 vio­la­tions of police pol­icy for mis­con­duct, such as mis­han­dling evi­dence seized by police at drug busts, improp­erly grant­ing favors, nepo­tism and trad­ing drugs for sex with known crim­i­nals. The Mac­Dougall report appears to clear L’Esperance of at least two accu­sa­tions related to han­dling of evidence.

L’Esperance retired from the police depart­ment in Jan­u­ary 2011, effec­tively resign­ing as Salisbury’s chief, while the St. Pierre report was under way. Although no crim­i­nal charges have resulted from the alle­ga­tions made against him in the St. Pierre report, he cur­rently faces theft charges relat­ing to his con­duct while police chief.

The charges

The first set of theft charges were filed against L’Esperance in July, the result of evi­dence unearthed by two inves­ti­ga­tions, led by St. Pierre, into the depart­ment, both com­mis­sioned by the town of Sal­is­bury. Accord­ing to court doc­u­ments, L’Esperance is charged with receiv­ing stolen prop­erty, specif­i­cally a World War II-era det­o­na­tor plunger device worth more than $250 (a felony) and a Hells Angels book­let worth less than $250 (a mis­de­meanor) from the for­mer home of David Plonowski, 28 Pike St., Sal­is­bury. Plonowski’s home was raided in 2007 fol­low­ing a drug investigation.

A sec­ond felony count involves the alleged mis­ap­pro­pri­a­tion of a 2001 Dodge Dakota pickup truck with 387,000 miles given to the town by local heavy con­struc­tion com­pany SPS New Eng­land in June 2010. Accord­ing to court doc­u­ments, L’Esperance picked up the truck and parked it at the Sal­is­bury Fire Depart­ment for a few months, then in fall 2010, gave the truck to Bryan Flem­ing, owner of Honks Mar­tin Road Sal­vage in Ames­bury, who sold it. Accord­ing to Sal­is­bury Town Man­ager Neil Har­ring­ton, L’Esperance didn’t have per­mis­sion to give away the truck.

Dropped in the first set of charges was one mis­de­meanor charge of steal­ing $50 worth of tools from the car trunk of a Lawrence man who was arrested. Accord­ing to Goldberger’s motion to dis­miss, the charge was dropped because of a lack of evidence.

On Dec. 23, L’Esperance was arraigned on a sec­ond set of theft-related charges filed by Sal­is­bury. They include one count of lar­ceny of prop­erty worth more than $250 (a plow) and two counts of lar­ceny of a motor vehi­cle, a Chevro­let Tahoe SUV and Harley-Davidson motor­cy­cle. The new charges again relate to the April 2007 raid and arrest at the Plonowski home.

The seizure took place after Plonowski’s arrest, and the vehi­cles and plow were ordered taken and held by Simmie’s Tow­ing, Gold­berger said at the arraign­ment. It was Plonowski’s wife who told town offi­cials that L’Esperance ordered the prop­erty seized, towed and held, Gold­berger said. The prop­erty was never returned to Plonowski’s wife, he added.

Sal­is­bury police also filed a crim­i­nal com­plaint alleg­ing that L’Esperance vio­lated Plonowski’s wife’s civil rights over the seizures, but the clerk mag­is­trate found insuf­fi­cient prob­a­ble cause to bring the com­plaint for­ward. Gold­berger filed a motion to have the civil rights charge reviewed by a judge to pos­si­bly rein­state it. Wexler denied the Gold­berger motion yesterday.

“I’m very happy Judge Wexler ruled as he did,” LaFlamme said.

The Plonowski case

On April 9, 2007, after a five-month drug inves­ti­ga­tion by the North­east Mer­ri­mack Val­ley Drug Task Force from Sal­is­bury, Ames­bury and Mer­ri­mack, police exe­cuted a war­rant on the Pike Street home of David Plonowski on charges of pos­ses­sion of cocaine with intent to dis­trib­ute. Police acted after neigh­bors reported a high level of traf­fic com­ing to and from the house. In addi­tion, dur­ing a Feb­ru­ary 2007 domes­tic abuse case there, police noticed weapons in the home. Plonowski’s firearms ID card had expired.

On the day of the raid, police broke down the front door, find­ing a lit­tle more than a half-ounce of cocaine, a loaded .22-caliber hand­gun and about $1,000 in cash. But as they searched, police found such a huge cache of weaponry that the State Police bomb squad was called, neigh­bors were evac­u­ated and the area closed to traf­fic for hours.

Court records indi­cate that police found 241 unique and pos­si­bly antique pieces of weaponry, includ­ing ammu­ni­tion, knives, swords, hand grenades, rifles, hand­guns, land mines and one 81 mm mor­tar shell. Drugs and drug para­pher­na­lia were also found, accord­ing to court records.

Plonowski was imme­di­ately taken into cus­tody and taken to the Sal­is­bury police sta­tion. An uniden­ti­fied woman with him was taken into pro­tec­tive cus­tody because she was ine­bri­ated, but she was not charged.

Plonowski was charged with 36 counts. A year later, through a plea deal, all but three counts were dropped. He was con­victed on two counts of pos­ses­sion of cocaine with intent to dis­trib­ute and car­ry­ing a firearm with­out a license. He was sen­tenced to two and a half to four years in state prison.

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