IAPE Evidence Blog

Sun-Times Media, LLC. Chicago Sun-Times, suntimes.com
BYLINE: JON SEIDEL Sun-Times Media jseidel@suntimes.com
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Will County, IL

Terry D. Jenkins 

The theft of three kilo­grams of heroin from a Will County sheriff’s evi­dence con­tainer wasn’t an inside job, a spe­cial pros­e­cu­tor said Thurs­day as he charged a Mid­loth­ian man with tak­ing part in the burglary.

But he said police are still look­ing for at least one other per­son who took part in the break-in.

Terry D. Jenk­ins, 43, is charged with bur­glary and is being held on $150,000 bail. He appeared in front of Will County Judge Marzell Richard­son Thursday.

The charges against him don’t men­tion the miss­ing heroin, only that he broke into the Will County sheriff’s secured evi­dence stor­age con­tainer Oct. 12 at 2402 E. Lar­away Road in Joliet. Chuck Col­burn of the Illi­nois Appel­late Prosecutor’s office, who is serv­ing as a spe­cial pros­e­cu­tor in the case, con­firmed it was dur­ing that break-in that the heroin went missing.

Jenk­ins was arrested at his home in Mid­loth­ian Wednes­day morn­ing. Col­burn would not say what led author­i­ties to him.

Colburn’s office and the Illi­nois State Police had been called in to inves­ti­gate the crime because it involved the sheriff’s department’s evi­dence. A state police offi­cial attended Jenk­ins’ bond hear­ing but wouldn’t answer a reporter’s ques­tions. Calls seek­ing com­ment from the state police haven’t been returned.

The depart­ment real­ized the heroin — with an esti­mated value of $270,000 — was stolen after offi­cers dis­cov­ered a break-in at the Lar­away Road com­plex Oct. 14.

The metal ship­ping con­tainer hold­ing the heroin in the fenced-in impound lot had been mon­i­tored by cam­eras and sealed with a high-tech lock. Records showed the drugs were moved there by Jana Scha­ef­fer, offi­cials said. She’s a civil­ian employee and daugh­ter of Sher­iff Paul Kaupas.

Her hus­band, Lt. Brett Scha­ef­fer, leads the Will County gang unit that con­fis­cated the drugs from 41-year-old Jose Zamago-Mena of Cal­i­for­nia dur­ing a traf­fic stop on Inter­state 55.

Deputy Chief Ken Kau­pas, another rel­a­tive of the sher­iff, ini­tially declined to rule out inter­nal sus­pects in the bur­glary because of the secu­rity at the com­plex. He later said he’d “hope and pray that this is not an inside job.”

Col­burn on Thurs­day ruled out that possibility.

“I can say that we found no evi­dence to sup­port that there was any inside involve­ment from any Will County employee,” he said.

The sheriff’s depart­ment didn’t involve itself in the inves­ti­ga­tion, and Kau­pas said he learned about Jenk­ins’ arrest Thurs­day after­noon from Sun-Times Media. He called it “very good news.”

“We look for­ward to hear­ing all the inti­mate details,” Kau­pas said.

Zamago-Mena is still in cus­tody await­ing trial. He appeared in a Joliet court­room Wednes­day and told Judge Edward Bur­mila his fam­ily had hired a pri­vate attor­ney. None showed, and the judge set another hear­ing for March 21.

A spokesman for Will County State’s Attor­ney James Glas­gow has said his office still plans to pros­e­cute Zamago-Mena. The mate­r­ial taken by offi­cers from Zamago-Mena’s truck in Feb­ru­ary 2011 has already tested pos­i­tive for heroin, police said.

Court records, mean­while, lay out Jenk­ins’ long his­tory of trou­bles with the law. He pleaded guilty in Will County to four counts of bur­glary in 2004, records show. Pros­e­cu­tors at the time said Jenk­ins admit­ted to break­ing into sev­eral stor­age units in Mokena.

His crim­i­nal his­tory in Cook County dates to 1986, when he was found guilty of bur­glary and pos­sess­ing bur­glars’ tools. He was ordered to pay back $300 and serve 1 1/2 years on pro­ba­tion, which he violated.

He served prison time on a 2003 bur­glary and a 2006 drug case, and he’s been arrested a dozen or so more times in Mid­loth­ian on lesser charges includ­ing crim­i­nal tres­pass, pos­sess­ing drugs and drug para­pher­na­lia, and vio­lat­ing orders of pro­tec­tion issued against him three times by the same woman.

He appeared to live briefly in Crest­wood dur­ing 2008, when he was charged with tele­phone harass­ment and vio­lat­ing an order of protection.

Con­tribut­ing: Lau­ren FitzPatrick 

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

The Asso­ci­ated Press, The Jour­nal Gazette, Cox Media Group, ktvu.com
BYLINE: DOMINIC ADAMS
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Fort Wayne, IN

FORT WAYNE, Ind. — Capt. Shane Lee’s task is to make sure the Fort Wayne Police Department’s move from its Creighton Avenue head­quar­ters to its new home in the City-County Build­ing doesn’t jeop­ar­dize any crim­i­nal cases.

Lee is over­see­ing the move of the department’s evi­dence stor­age on the sixth floor of Creighton Avenue to its more mod­ern home on Main Street. The ren­o­va­tions to the City-County Build­ing cost more than $4.8 mil­lion and included remov­ing the esca­la­tor and beef­ing up build­ing security.

Every box, folder, pool cue, com­puter, stuffed ani­mal, tire, gun, drug and other item con­sid­ered evi­dence in a crim­i­nal case must never leave the sight of an offi­cer or some­one who works in the prop­erty room.

An offi­cer watches the movers pack the boxes, fol­lows them to the mov­ing truck, watches the evi­dence loaded onto the truck, locks the truck after it’s loaded, fol­lows the truck to the City-County Build­ing and then watches it get unloaded.

The process will be repeated until all 400,000 boxes of evi­dence are moved.

“For a suc­cess­ful pros­e­cu­tion of a crim­i­nal case, we have to show that the con­ti­nu­ity of evi­dence was strictly fol­lowed,” Lee said.

If an item is left unat­tended, a defense attor­ney could argue the evi­dence is no longer in the same state it was when police ini­tially seized it, Lee said.

That could mean a judge could bar the evi­dence from being used in a trial.

Movers recently started the month long process of mov­ing the police depart­ment head­quar­ters down­town — some­thing the depart­ment has been plan­ning for the past year and a half.

“We’ve made do with this build­ing for 15 years, but it was never made for pub­lic safety,” Chief Rusty York said.

Movers snaked carts in between rows of shelves stacked to the ceil­ing with boxes.

One box is labeled “death inves­ti­ga­tion,” while another con­tains items col­lected in a stab­bing inves­ti­ga­tion and a third box is labeled “sex­ual assault.”

As the carts are loaded with evi­dence, an offi­cer watches nearby and waits until the movers fill a cou­ple of carts.

The three snake back through the aisles, into the hall­way and onto the elevator.

Once in the lobby, the carts are pushed out the front door and across a makeshift bridge to the side door of the mov­ing truck, then loaded inside.

Another offi­cer watches from his unmarked police cruiser and read­ies to fol­low the truck to its new home at the City-County Building.

“It’ll be com­pa­ra­ble in size, but orga­nized dif­fer­ent,” Diane Spiller, the department’s evi­dence man­ager, said of the new loca­tion in the City-County Building.

Each piece of evi­dence is placed in a sealed bag, labeled with a bar­code and put in a box that also is labeled with a barcode.

Spiller said the evi­dence in the new room will be stored on move­able shelves.

Offi­cials had to make room to store evi­dence for a long period — Spiller said, for exam­ple, that evi­dence in child molest­ing cases must be kept until the child turns 31 years old.

There are dif­fer­ent areas of stor­age for DNA, firearms, nar­cotics and homi­cide evi­dence, Lee said.

“They have been dili­gently work­ing for a num­ber of months to pre­pare for the move,” he said of the evi­dence room workers.

Spiller said large tools that have been seized are dif­fi­cult to move because often they can’t be stored in a tra­di­tional box.

Begin­ning this week, offi­cers with crim­i­nal evi­dence or other prop­erty have been tak­ing it to the City-County Building.

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Infor­ma­tion from: The Jour­nal Gazette, http://www.journalgazette.net

Copy­right The Asso­ci­ated Press

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

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, Amer­i­can Press, The Repub­lic, a divi­sion of Home News Enter­prises, therepublic.com
BYLINE:
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Cal­casieu Parish, LA

LAKE CHARLES, La. — A judge has ordered a for­mer Cal­casieu Parish deputy to pay close to $100,000 in resti­tu­tion to make up for money miss­ing from the sheriff’s office evi­dence room.

The Amer­i­can Press reports (http://bit.ly/qjfACs) Troy Hugh Tay­lor pleaded guilty Tues­day to felony theft, malfea­sance and drug pos­ses­sion. Pros­e­cu­tors said he stole prop­erty, drugs and money from the evi­dence room.

Inves­ti­ga­tors report­edly found some of the items at his home, includ­ing a lap­top com­puter, fish­ing poles and iPods.

Tay­lor was charged with sev­eral counts of drug pos­ses­sion after detec­tives report­edly found more than 3,000 pills in a safe in his office.

Carter pre­vi­ously sen­tenced Tay­lor to five years in prison on each count, but sus­pended the time. He ordered Tay­lor to make monthly pay­ments of $400 toward the balance.

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Infor­ma­tion from: Amer­i­can Press, http://www.americanpress.com

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