IAPE Evidence Blog

citizen-times.com

Asheville, NC

The audit of the Asheville Police Depart­ment evi­dence room shows what every­one had feared: A lot of evi­dence is miss­ing, espe­cially drugs. There is no sub­sti­tute for thor­ough, strict safe­guards to avert a repetition.

Up to 200 evi­dence parcels could be miss­ing drugs, Dis­trict Attor­ney Ron Moore said Tues­day after receiv­ing the final report on an audit done by an out­side firm. Moore said he could not deter­mine whether any pend­ing court cases may be compromised.

Other prob­lems were a poor cat­a­loging sys­tem and moun­tains of clut­ter. “They found a lot of items that had been lying around for a long time,” Moore said. “Stuff has to go out the door as cases are dealt with.”

Most of the drugs believed miss­ing were from cases already resolved and were des­ig­nated for the “burn pile.” It doesn’t take a rocket sci­en­tist to fig­ure out that those drugs prob­a­bly wound up on the illicit market.

The inquiry began nearly a year ago, after Moore learned that long­time evi­dence and prop­erty man­ager William Lee Smith had resigned after being sus­pended. After Moore’s request, a sam­ple audit was begun.

On April 1, Moore and a defense attor­ney found that 397 oxy­codone tablets were miss­ing. Four days later Moore ordered the evi­dence room sealed and ordered a full, inde­pen­dent audit. He was crit­i­cal of police for not doing a full audit after his ear­lier request and for not telling him about early results.

Police Chief Bill Hogan defended his actions, say­ing that the depart­ment was fol­low­ing guide­lines by the Com­mis­sion on Accred­i­ta­tion for Law Enforce­ment Agen­cies Inc. Later in April the chief announced his retire­ment, effec­tive in May.

Now that the full audit is com­pleted, the city’s old evi­dence room can be reopened so pros­e­cu­tors can pur­sue cases involv­ing evi­dence stored there. A new room had been opened to han­dle evi­dence col­lected since the old room was sealed.

This is not the first time Bun­combe County has had an evi­dence room scan­dal. An audit con­ducted after Van Dun­can became sher­iff in 2007 uncov­ered mas­sive prob­lems dur­ing the 12-year tenure of Bobby Med­ford. Audi­tors could not account for 223 hand­guns, 114 rifles and drugs listed on 1,318 entry sheets. Rape kits and evi­dence bags had been mishandled.

Other major scan­dals in recent years have occurred in Florida, Ten­nessee, Texas, New Mex­ico and Louisiana. A mil­lion dol­lars in drugs was miss­ing in Day­tona Beach, Fla., and nearly $3 mil­lion in Nashville.

Evi­dence rooms con­tain a lot of items that are of value both to the prosecutor’s case and in their own right. Big money means big temp­ta­tion. Rigid con­trols are nec­es­sary to make sure no one gives into temp­ta­tion or sim­ply becomes sloppy in procedures.

Assis­tant City Man­ager Jeff Richard­son said the city wants to work with Moore and the audi­tors “to under­stand what the find­ings are and what the city needs to do mov­ing for­ward to address the con­cerns. We’re com­mit­ted to do what­ever we need to do to get the processes and stan­dards where they need to be.”

There are a lot of ideas out there. The prop­erty and evi­dence man­age­ment guide for Cal­i­for­nia Police Offi­cers Stan­dards and Train­ing has exhaus­tive rec­om­men­da­tions, includ­ing both annual and sur­prise audits.

The man­ual says audits should be con­ducted by peo­ple “who are not rou­tinely or directly con­nected with the con­trol of prop­erty and evidence.”

An evi­dence room scan­dal in Hous­ton, a city with a strong-mayor form of gov­ern­ment, resulted in over­whelm­ing ref­er­en­dum approval in 2004 for a mea­sure to allow the elected city con­troller to audit all departments.

Asheville does not have to rein­vent the wheel, merely see that it rolls properly.

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