IAPE Evidence Blog

The Sara­sota Herald-Tribune, heraldtribune.com
BYLINE: Tom Lyons
Link to Article

Sara­sota, FL

A local attor­ney called last week to say he had a news­wor­thy report in hand, but didn’t want to say where he got it, and wanted to remain name­less when he passed it to me.

It was about evi­dence stor­age issues at the new Sara­sota Police head­quar­ters, the kind of thing that might cause chain-of-custody prob­lems for pros­e­cu­tors han­dling crim­i­nal cases.

Local crim­i­nal defense attor­neys could be all over it, given the chance. And they were all about to get that chance, because the report was being handed to some of them, too, the attor­ney said.

Think­ing I was about to be handed some­thing that had some­how been kept under wraps until it was smug­gled out of the bow­els of the city bureau­cracy, I had to chuckle when I got my first look at it.

It was a per­fectly ordi­nary audit report that had been com­pleted in May 2011.

“You can obtain copies of this report by con­tact­ing us at Office of the City Audi­tor and Clerk,” it said on page two, fol­lowed by the address and phone num­ber for Sara­sota City Hall.

And, actu­ally, you need not bother. You can read it online at the city’s web­site. Just look up recent inter­nal audits and click on the “Sara­sota Police Depart­ment Prop­erty Evi­dence” audit, also known as #EX 11 – 01.

It won’t be as much fun doing it that way, with­out the intrigue and hype. But the report, signed by Sarasota’s inter­nal audit man­ager Heather Riti and City Clerk Pam Nadalini, says after evi­dence and other tagged-and-stored, investigation-related prop­erty was moved to the new police head­quar­ters build­ing late in 2010, at least three pack­ages were dis­cov­ered to be lost or at least tem­porar­ily misplaced.

One is a box con­tain­ing a few small pieces of crack cocaine. Another holds a hand­gun that was sched­uled for destruc­tion and may have been, though the records don’t make that clear. And the last is listed as “$14.49 in change.”

Not too excit­ing so far.

But, as the report added in pos­i­tive sound­ing government-speak, “oppor­tu­ni­ties exist to enhance phys­i­cal secu­rity” of the evi­dence stor­age rooms. The list of flaws there is where crim­i­nal defense lawyers will be shop­ping for things that could worry a jury.

For instance, key­pad entry to one evi­dence stor­age room is less than ideal, it says, because “all offi­cers know the key­pad com­bi­na­tion” even though the room “should not be acces­si­ble to any­one except Prop­erty and Evi­dence Unit staff.”

Alarms that went off at the old build­ing when any­one came and went through an evidence-room door weren’t in place in the new build­ing, the audit says.

And though the sys­tem can use bio­met­ric iden­ti­fi­ca­tion to record which Prop­erty and Evi­dence staff mem­bers come in and out, and when, those staff mem­bers were also given keys that can be used instead. The keys don’t leave any record of who came in, the audit says.

That’s all kind of amaz­ing, says defense attor­ney Derek Byrd, pres­i­dent of the Sara­sota County Bar Association.

“There isn’t a prop­erty depart­ment in the world that allows just any cop to come and go,” Byrd says, because of the poten­tial for evi­dence tampering.

Pills can be replaced, incon­ve­nient bio­log­i­cal evi­dence could be switched or destroyed.

“It’s going to cre­ate issues because that’s not the way it’s always been done,” Byrd says.

But just as amaz­ing, Byrd said, is that this audit was fin­ished in May of last year and, even if qui­etly posted at City Hall at the time, defense attor­neys have not known about it.

On Mon­day, which was a hol­i­day, I couldn’t reach any­one who could tell me whether the State Attorney’s Office was ever told about the inter­nal audit. Police Chief Michael Hol­loway got a copy, since it was his depart­ment that requested the audit, accord­ing to a list of recip­i­ents in my copy. But I was unable to reach him on Mon­day to ask who else was informed.

Rules of evi­dence require that pros­e­cu­tors tell defense teams about poten­tial evi­dence prob­lems “if they knew about it,” Byrd said.

If they weren’t told about the audit, he said, the ques­tion is: Why not?

Tom Lyons can be con­tacted at tom.lyons@heraldtribune.com or (941) 361‑4964.

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Inter­na­tional Asso­ci­a­tion for Prop­erty and Evi­dence
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