IAPE Evidence Blog

The Hawk Eye, thehawkeye.com
BYLINE: JOHN MANGALONZO jmangalonzo@thehawkeye.com
Link to Article

Burling­ton, IA

Evi­dence tech­ni­cian charged with drug possession

Burling­ton Police offi­cials are going through every piece of evi­dence from sev­eral pend­ing cases stored inside their build­ing in the wake of the drug arrest of the department’s evi­dence custodian.

Scott Jay Kuster, 49, of Burling­ton was fired as BPD’s evi­dence technician/ IT spe­cial­ist Mon­day. He has been a civil­ian employee with the depart­ment since 2007.

Police Chief Dan Lut­teneg­ger said two police offi­cers arrested Kuster Sat­ur­day morn­ing after see­ing him smok­ing a mar­i­juana pipe in the under­ground level of the park­ing ramp at Third and Wash­ing­ton streets, which is behind the police depart­ment headquarters.

Kuster was booked into the Des Moines County jail, charged with pos­ses­sion of mar­i­juana and pos­ses­sion of drug para­pher­na­lia. He is free on $1,000 bail and set to appear in court Friday.

Lut­teneg­ger has asked the department’s crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion divi­sion to look into the matter.

Offi­cers with train­ing on how to man­age the evi­dence stor­age room will recheck seized items, includ­ing drugs, in the com­ing days.

Maj. Doug Beaird said the depart­ment recently com­pleted an audit of the sec­tion and all evi­dence logged in the department’s cus­tody was all in order at the time.

“It’s just a mat­ter of going through it piece by piece,” Beaird said. “We are con­duct­ing a re-audit.”

Offi­cials said they have no rea­son to sus­pect Kuster acquired any pot from the department’s evi­dence lock­ers but noted the ongo­ing recount.

Dozens of pend­ing drug cases are on the crim­i­nal docket in Des Moines County and local pros­e­cu­tors expect a flurry of inquiries from defense attor­neys ques­tion­ing evi­dence chain of custody.

The police department’s com­put­er­ized sys­tem logs seized evi­dence inves­ti­ga­tors held for pend­ing cases.

It is designed to track who’s han­dling evi­dence and when.

For instance, when an offi­cer seizes prop­erty or drugs from an arrested sus­pect, the offi­cer trans­ports the item to the BPD and logs it into the department’s com­puter sys­tem, which assigns it a number.

Next, the offi­cer seals the evi­dence and secures it in a locker.

From there, the evi­dence cus­to­dian takes it out and places the item in the evi­dence room. A bar­code reflects when the item had been moved to another secure loca­tion and by who.

The evi­dence tech­ni­cian also is tasked to trans­port evi­dence that needs test­ing at the Iowa Divi­sion of Crim­i­nal Inves­ti­ga­tion crime lab­o­ra­tory in Ankeny. There, the evi­dence again is logged into the state’s net­work, which com­pares the data to the local police records.

The items are again sealed, and the lab technician’s sig­na­ture is added to tam­per­proof tape.

There only are two key hold­ers for the BPD evi­dence room: the evi­dence cus­to­dian and the chief of detectives.

Kuster was described as a “good employee who made bad choices.”

Lut­teneg­ger and Beaird said there are no indi­ca­tions Kuster had been smok­ing pot while work­ing, describ­ing the man as depend­able and a metic­u­lous employee.

As the in-house infor­ma­tion tech­nol­ogy per­son, Kuster also main­tained the com­put­ers inside police offi­cers’ cruis­ers, and Lut­teneg­ger said the equip­ment and the data stored in it has not been compromised.

“It’s a spot (evi­dence technician/IT spe­cial­ist posi­tion) that needs to be filled,” Lut­teneg­ger said. “We will be look­ing at our options.”

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