IAPE Evidence Blog

Fisher Inter­ac­tive Net­work, komonews.com
BYLINE: Jon Hum­bert
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Seat­tle, WA

SEATTLE — The Seat­tle Police Department’s audit of poten­tial mis­con­duct has not yet begun, but it is already com­ing under pub­lic scrutiny.

The audit was sched­uled in the wake of Thurs­day’ sui­cide of an offi­cer sus­pected of evi­dence tam­per­ing. The goal is sim­ple: pros­e­cu­tors and the police depart­ment both want to know what other pos­si­ble prob­lems Offi­cer Richard F. Nel­son may have caused. How­ever, the con­se­quences will not be so sim­ple, says one attorney.

The 21-year vet­eran offi­cer was found fatally wounded just hours after his arrest. And with the end of his life began unrav­el­ing of his mistakes.

“The prob­lem is you don’t know if that’s the only thing he’s ever done wrong,” said John Crow­ley, a defense attor­ney. Two of Crowley’s clients were found guilty in cases involv­ing Nelson.

SPD says Nel­son failed a so-called integrity test when he failed to book cocaine into evi­dence dur­ing an under­cover sting tar­get­ing the offi­cer. As a result, the depart­ment decided to con­duct an inter­nal audit into the last sev­eral years of Nelson’s work “of all of the officer’s involve­ment in any found prop­erty or any narcotic-related events that he may have been involved with in the last cou­ple years,” said Assis­tant Police Chief Nick Metz.

Inves­ti­ga­tors will have to review stacks of files from pre­vi­ous and cur­rent cases for pos­si­ble evi­dence mis­han­dling. And Crow­ley says the results could affect the integrity of the cases in which Nel­son was involved. If a pat­tern of prob­lems is iden­ti­fied, Crow­ley said, the courts will allow closed cases to be reexamined.

King County pros­e­cu­tors are also con­cerned about the poten­tial impact on their cases. They plan to con­duct their own audit, but will allow SPD to take the lead on the fact-finding tasks.

Crow­ley says he wel­comes the audit, but is con­cerned about poten­tial com­pro­mises; he says he would pre­fer the audit be han­dled by an out­side agency.

Seat­tle police has not spec­i­fied on the details of the audit. It was not known how long the review may take, and whether any out­side agen­cies will pro­vide oversight. 

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“Law Enforce­ment Serv­ing the Needs of Law Enforce­ment”
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