IAPE Evidence Blog

United States Depart­ment of Jus­tice
Link to Article

More than 2,000 state and local law enforce­ment agen­cies responded to a sur­vey [1] to:

1. Esti­mate the num­ber of unsolved homi­cide, rape and prop­erty cases [2] nation­wide that con­tain foren­sic evi­dence that has not been sub­mit­ted to a crime lab­o­ra­tory for analysis.

2. Deter­mine the exis­tence of poli­cies and pro­ce­dures regard­ing the pro­cess­ing, sub­mis­sion to a lab and reten­tion of foren­sic evidence.

The sur­vey showed that agen­cies had not sub­mit­ted foren­sic evi­dence (includ­ing DNA, fin­ger­prints, firearms and tool­marks) to a crime lab in:

* Four­teen per­cent of open, unsolved homi­cides.
* Eigh­teen per­cent of open, unsolved rapes.
* Twenty-three per­cent of open, unsolved prop­erty crimes.

There are rea­sons why a law enforce­ment agency may not sub­mit foren­sic evi­dence to a lab. The evi­dence may be con­sid­ered not pro­ba­tive, charges may have been dropped or a guilty plea entered. How­ever, the researchers who con­ducted the NIJ-funded sur­vey also con­cluded that some law enforce­ment agen­cies may not fully under­stand the value of evi­dence in devel­op­ing new inves­tiga­tive leads.

Learn more about why evi­dence may not have been submitted.

The sur­vey also revealed that:

* Only four out of 10 law enforce­ment agen­cies have a com­put­er­ized sys­tem for track­ing foren­sic evi­dence either in their inven­tory or after it is sent to the crime lab. Learn more about the use of com­put­er­ized systems.

* Poli­cies and prac­tices for evi­dence reten­tion var­ied widely from juris­dic­tion to juris­dic­tion. Learn more about poli­cies and practice.

* There are steps that law enforce­ment agen­cies, foren­sic lab­o­ra­to­ries and pros­e­cu­tors can take to improve the use of foren­sic evi­dence. Read a sum­mary of the study recommendations.

The sur­vey did not determine:

* How many of the open cases would be solved or yield inves­tiga­tive leads if evi­dence in them were to be sent to the lab.

* The num­ber of cases in which evi­dence was ana­lyzed in the past, but which now, with more advanced tech­nol­ogy, might be solved or yield inves­tiga­tive leads. Read more about the poten­tial value of the evidence.

Why Evi­dence May Not Be Sent to a Lab
There are many rea­sons why evi­dence col­lected from a crime may not be sub­mit­ted to a lab­o­ra­tory for analy­sis. Sub­se­quent inves­ti­ga­tion may have shown that the evi­dence would not be pro­ba­tive, charges against an alleged per­pe­tra­tor may have been dropped, the sus­pect may have pled guilty, or, in a rape case, the issue may be “con­sent” and, there­fore, analy­sis of the evi­dence may have been con­sid­ered not probative.

How­ever, the study showed that some law enforce­ment agen­cies do not fully under­stand the poten­tial value of foren­sic evi­dence in devel­op­ing new leads in a crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion; for example:

* Forty-four per­cent said one of the rea­sons they did not send evi­dence to the lab was because a sus­pect had not been identified,

* Fif­teen per­cent said they did not sub­mit evi­dence because analy­sis had not been requested by a prosecutor.

We know that DNA evi­dence can iden­tify a sus­pect in a “no sus­pect” case or link a per­pe­tra­tor to a spe­cific crime through CODIS, the national DNA data­base, and latent prints can iden­tify unknown per­pe­tra­tors through auto­mated sys­tems like the national Inte­grated Auto­mated Fin­ger­print Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion Sys­tem (IAFIS). The knowl­edge gap revealed in some of these find­ings — par­tic­u­larly, as the sur­vey reveals, among the nation’s small (less than 25 offi­cers) agen­cies — could be due to a lack of train­ing. Spe­cial­ized train­ing in these cases may have been ben­e­fi­cial and led to a dif­fer­ent out­come. In another find­ing from the study, 11 per­cent of the agen­cies reported that one of the rea­sons they do not sub­mit evi­dence for analy­sis is because of the lab’s inabil­ity to pro­duce timely results, and 6 per­cent said the lab was not accept­ing new evi­dence due to back­log issues. (See About the Back­log on DNA.gov).

> See Rea­sons Why Law Enforce­ment Agen­cies did not Sub­mit Foren­sic Evi­dence for Unsolved Cases (pdf, 81 pages) in the full report. Link to Article

Many Agen­cies Lack Com­put­er­ized Sys­tems
Com­put­er­ized infor­ma­tion sys­tems enhance the abil­ity of police agen­cies to man­age, track and mon­i­tor foren­sic evi­dence in crim­i­nal cases. The sur­vey revealed that more than half of law enforce­ment agen­cies (56 per­cent) did not have a com­put­er­ized infor­ma­tion sys­tem that was capa­ble of track­ing foren­sic evi­dence inven­tory. Large agen­cies (100 or more sworn offi­cers) were much more likely to have a com­put­er­ized sys­tem, with nearly three out of four report­ing that their infor­ma­tion sys­tem allowed track­ing of foren­sic evidence.

For the agen­cies that do have a com­put­er­ized infor­ma­tion sys­tem, the sur­vey did not reveal the exact capa­bil­i­ties, such as whether they were able to spec­ify what evi­dence has been tested (or not tested) in a case, how long evi­dence in a case has been in stor­age, and the sta­tus of cases. The sur­vey also did not deter­mine, for the 44 per­cent of agen­cies that do have a com­put­er­ized sys­tem, whether these sys­tems are inte­grated with more cen­tral­ized police records man­age­ment systems.

> See Law Enforce­ment Infor­ma­tion Sys­tems and Foren­sic Evi­dence (pdf, 81 pages) in the full report. Link to Article

Many Agen­cies Lack Pol­icy, Prac­tice
Poli­cies and prac­tices for retain­ing evi­dence var­ied widely from juris­dic­tion to juris­dic­tion. In addi­tion to the need to retain evi­dence in unsolved crimes, there are an increas­ing num­ber of states that have passed laws requir­ing the indef­i­nite stor­age of foren­sic evi­dence used in crim­i­nal con­vic­tions. About a third of the agen­cies (38 per­cent) said they had an evidence-retention pol­icy regard­ing the preser­va­tion of bio­log­i­cal evi­dence in cases where the defen­dant was found guilty, and 16 per­cent said they were unsure if they had such a policy.

Among agen­cies that do have a pol­icy regard­ing the reten­tion of evi­dence post-conviction, 51 per­cent reported that the pol­icy was gov­erned by state statute, 43 per­cent said evi­dence was retained due to agency pol­icy, and 5 per­cent said the pol­icy was in place as a result of a legal decision.

> See Law Enforce­ment Poli­cies for Retain­ing Bio­log­i­cal Evi­dence (pdf, 81 pages) in the full report. Link to Article

Rec­om­men­da­tions for the Future

The researchers made a num­ber of recommendations:

* Increased train­ing for law enforce­ment on the ben­e­fits and use of foren­sic evi­dence, includ­ing guide­lines for pri­or­i­tiz­ing cases for analysis.

* Cre­ation (or improve­ment) of infor­ma­tion man­age­ment sys­tems to track and mon­i­tor foren­sic evidence.

* Devel­op­ment of bet­ter pro­to­cols to ensure timely sub­mis­sion of pro­ba­tive foren­sic evi­dence to the lab and stan­dard­ized poli­cies for evi­dence retention.

* More stor­age capac­ity for ana­lyzed and unan­a­lyzed foren­sic evidence.

* Bet­ter coor­di­na­tion within a law enforce­ment agency and among the police, foren­sic lab and the prosecutor’s office. Coor­di­na­tion could involve ded­i­cated staff for case man­age­ment, reg­u­lar team meet­ings for case review and case track­ing sys­tems to allow information-sharing across these agencies.

* More research to bet­ter under­stand (1) what pro­por­tion of the open cases might be solved or yield inves­tiga­tive leads if evi­dence was sub­mit­ted to a lab and (2) how such cases should be pri­or­i­tized for testing.

> See Study Impli­ca­tions (pdf, 81 pages) in the full report. Link to Article

The Poten­tial Value of Unan­a­lyzed Evi­dence not Addressed
The sur­vey does not reveal how many open cases with unan­a­lyzed evi­dence would be solved or yield inves­tiga­tive leads if evi­dence were to be sent to the lab. It also does not address the num­ber cases in which evi­dence was ana­lyzed in the past, but which now — with the ben­e­fit of larger offender data­bases and new foren­sic tech­nolo­gies — might be solved or yield inves­tiga­tive leads; for exam­ple, a latent print run through IAFIS sev­eral years ago with no suc­cess­ful match could yield a hit now. More research would help us bet­ter under­stand these issues.

> See Study Lim­i­ta­tions (pdf, 81 pages) in the full report. Link to Article

About the Sur­vey Responses
The 72 per­cent response rate for the sur­vey is con­sid­ered very good; 2,250 of the 3,094 state and local law enforce­ment agen­cies that the sur­vey was sent to responded. In some juris­dic­tions, how­ever, the num­ber of unsolved cases con­tain­ing unan­a­lyzed evi­dence was based on esti­mates; and some of the larger county and state agen­cies reported dif­fi­culty pro­vid­ing infor­ma­tion about rape and prop­erty cases because they do not main­tain these cases in a cen­tral­ized system.

> See Study Lim­i­ta­tions (pdf, 81 pages) in the full report. Link to Article

Notes

[1] Strom, Kevin J., Jeri Ropero-Miller, Shel­ton Jones, Nathan Sikes, Mark Pope and Nicole Horstmann, The 2007 Sur­vey of Law Enforce­ment Foren­sic Evi­dence Pro­cess­ing (pdf, 81 pages), Final Report, Wash­ing­ton, DC: U.S. Depart­ment of Jus­tice, National Insti­tute of Jus­tice, Sep­tem­ber 2009, 228415.

[2] Unsolved cases were defined as cases that had not been offi­cially cleared by the law enforce­ment agency.

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

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Link to Arti­cle
One Picture

Clay­ton County, GA

When the Clay­ton County Board of Com­mis­sion­ers voted to remove Jeff Turner as the county’s police chief, they detailed “12 issues which caused the board to have some con­fi­dence concerns.”

Spe­cial: Jeff Turner

Board mem­bers voted to reas­sign Turner to direct the county’s police acad­emy, giv­ing him until Mon­day to defend him­self against the fol­low­ing allegations:

1. On Sept. 10, 2007, a Clay­ton County offi­cer was caught and arrested by fed­eral agents for com­mit­ting the offense of entic­ing a minor child to engage in ille­gal sex­ual activ­i­ties. This arrest was highly pub­li­cized and brought dis­grace upon the depart­ment and the county. The fact that this offi­cer com­mit­ted these crimes using a county com­puter in a county vehi­cle while on duty is dis­turb­ing. The fact that he was caught not by a super­vi­sor and instead by a fed­eral agency calls into ques­tion inter­nal depart­men­tal con­trol or lack thereof.

2. In Octo­ber 2007, alle­ga­tions were lodged against a Clay­ton County offi­cer claim­ing he had engaged in sex with a female he had arrested prior to trans­port­ing her to the jail. On Dec. 7, 2007, that Clay­ton County offi­cer was ter­mi­nated after admit­ting he had engaged the ser­vices of pros­ti­tutes both on– and off-duty

3. In May 2007, a female detec­tive lodged a com­plaint of sex­ual harass­ment to her imme­di­ate super­vi­sor. The detec­tive has sub­se­quently filed suit against Clay­ton County for sex­ual harass­ment and retaliation.

4. On Oct 8, 2008, a com­plaint of sex­ual harass­ment was lodged by a female appli­cant against a sergeant. The sergeant was accused of keep­ing a female in a closed room, kiss­ing her breast and attempt­ing to fon­dle her gen­i­talia. This inves­ti­ga­tion was opened and closed in less than eight hours. Fur­ther­more, this case was not prop­erly eval­u­ated for poten­tial crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion prior to the close of the inves­ti­ga­tion. Addi­tion­ally, it appears that the chief dimin­ished the seri­ous nature of the offense com­mit­ted by the sergeant when report­ing the inci­dent to the chair­man. In early 2009 when suit was filed, it was fur­ther dis­cov­ered that Chief Turner had failed to fol­low a Clay­ton County ordi­nance regard­ing the proper noti­fi­ca­tion of sex­ual harass­ment alle­ga­tions. Clay­ton County had to set­tle this case in order to limit poten­tial dam­age liability.

5. In early spring 2009, the board of com­mis­sion­ers was deal­ing with legal mat­ters regard­ing the trans­fer of employ­ees from the police depart­ment back to the Sheriff’s depart­ment. Con­se­quently, Chief Turner was advised by both the chief of staff and the chair­man not to pro­mote employ­ees to rank of lieu­tenant as those bil­lets would prob­a­bly be trans­ferred out of the police depart­ment and redis­trib­uted else­where. Chief Turner ignored that direc­tive. His actions have gen­er­ated 2 law­suits, one of which we are still defend­ing. These actions, along with Chief Turner’s lack of coop­er­a­tion of work­ing with the board dur­ing the bud­get cri­sis led the board to coun­sel Chief Turner.

6. After receiv­ing sev­eral com­plaints over the sum­mer of 2009 from Sher­iff Kim­brough that Chief Turner had not been shar­ing vital crime sta­tis­tics with the sher­iffs depart­ment, a meet­ing was con­vened in order to deter­mine the sta­tus of the police department’s crime map­ping ini­tia­tive known as Crime View. This is a soft­ware pro­gram the police depart­ment pur­chased with drug funds which both the chief of staff and the chair­man had been led to believe is fully oper­a­tional. The chief and cer­tain staff mem­bers admit­ted that the police depart­ment had paid over $109,000 to a ven­dor for hard­ware and soft­ware. The county has not received any soft­ware to date and it is ques­tion­able what deliv­er­ables have been pro­vided to the county. Fur­ther­more, police depart­ment and admin staff admit­ted that they failed to read the con­tract which requires the county to invest an addi­tional $130,000 in order to imple­ment the project. It is unclear who within the police depart­ment was assigned to man­age this project.

7. On Aug. 25, 2009, a Clay­ton County police nar­cotics agent trav­eled in a police car to visit a female friend. Dur­ing his visit at the friend’s home, the female’s boyfriend came to the house and dis­cov­ered the officer’s pres­ence. While flee­ing the res­i­dence in a panic, the offi­cer ran into his own vehi­cle with his weapon drawn and shot a hole in it. This inci­dent was never reported by Chief Turner to the chief of staff or chair­man. To date, no inter­nal affairs inves­ti­ga­tion has been com­pleted nor has any dis­ci­pli­nary action been taken in this case.

8. On Sept 7, 2009, two machine guns were stolen from the trunk of a patrolman’s car. Chief Turner was ques­tioned and coun­seled regard­ing why he would allow a patrol­man to carry such weaponry in a vehi­cle which he drove home. The theft occurred while the county vehi­cle was parked in the park­ing lot of the apart­ment com­plex where the offi­cer lived.

9. On Sept. 9, 2009, a Clay­ton County police offi­cer ini­ti­ated a police chase because a male per­pe­tra­tor was sus­pected of solic­it­ing sex from a pros­ti­tute. The chase con­tin­ued into Ful­ton County, where it ended on Old National High­way in a motor vehi­cle acci­dent. Unfor­tu­nately, this acci­dent resulted in the death of 2 inno­cent women. A review of the police depart­ment records reveals that six inno­cent bystanders have died from 2007 to 2009 due to police chases. As a result of the 2009 acci­dent, Chair­man Bell ques­tioned depart­men­tal chase policies.

10. In late Octo­ber of this year, Chief Turner reported alle­ga­tions of seri­ous mis­con­duct on the part of cer­tain Clay­ton County police offi­cers that had arisen from what appeared to his inter­nal affairs offi­cers as a cred­i­ble wit­ness. The alle­ga­tions of wrong-doing are of such a seri­ous, sen­si­tive, and far-reaching nature that they can­not be dis­cussed in this forum. Over Chief Turner’s objec­tions, the mat­ter was reported to Chair­man Bell. Chief Turner was instructed to fully brief the chair­man regard­ing this mat­ter. Chief Turner received clear instruc­tions from the chair­man as how to pro­ceed with the inves­ti­ga­tion. Chief Turner rebuffed the chairman’s key direc­tive and pro­ceeded on his own path. The mat­ter has lan­guished unre­solved for more than six weeks, and with­out fur­ther updates to the chairman.

11. Early this year the sher­iff, dis­trict attor­ney and solic­i­tor requested assis­tance from county staff in order to con­duct an audit of their respec­tive staffs in order to deter­mine if any county assets were miss­ing. Inter­nal audits were con­ducted in each depart­ment. The final report revealed that weapons and other assets were miss­ing from the sheriff’s depart­ment. Given the sim­i­lar­i­ties in law enforce­ment func­tion exis­tent between the police and sheriff’s depart­ment, an audit of the police depart­ment was war­ranted. Chief Turner was noti­fied well in advance that the audit would take place. The audit was com­pleted in late Novem­ber. The audit revealed that there are 138 weapons unac­counted for and 85 firearms car­ried by police offi­cers for which the dept has no doc­u­men­ta­tion for how they came into the department’s pos­ses­sion. Seri­ous con­cerns regard­ing the stor­age, han­dling and dis­posal of drugs are also enu­mer­ated in the audit report.

12. There are 14 areas of audit which are red-flagged as rep­re­sent­ing sig­nif­i­cant risk or lia­bil­i­ties. The nar­cotics evi­dence room is in dis­ar­ray and over­flow­ing with drugs (over 2K lbs) much of which have destruc­tion orders dat­ing back to 2008. The report arrives at the con­clu­sion that “effec­tive man­age­ment con­trols are incom­plete or nonex­is­tent con­cern­ing firearms inven­tory and the prop­erty and evi­dence room.” The con­di­tion of the nar­cotics evi­dence room in par­tic­u­lar, calls in to ques­tion what, if any admin over­sight is tak­ing place. This area of the police depart­ment over­all respon­si­bil­ity calls for the high­est level of orga­ni­za­tional control.

– List cour­tesy of Clay­ton County Chief of Staff Alex S. Cohilas

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

St. Louis Busi­ness Jour­nal
BYLINE: Kelsey Volk­mann
Link to Article

St. Louis, MO

The St. Louis Board of Police Com­mis­sion­ers mis­man­aged money and failed to over­see a con­tract with St. Louis Met­ro­pol­i­tan Tow­ing, accord­ing to a state audit released Tuesday.

The police board held more than $4 mil­lion in money seized from crim­i­nal sus­pects, didn’t prop­erly iden­tify the own­ers of $591,000 of it and inap­pro­pri­ately spent more than $188,000 of it for var­i­ous oper­at­ing expenses, state audi­tor Susan Mon­tee said.

More than $24,000 was stolen from the evi­dence room, audi­tors said.

The board also failed to ade­quately mon­i­tor the vehi­cle tow­ing oper­a­tions of St. Louis Met­ro­pol­i­tan Tow­ing, which under­paid tow­ing fees total­ing $453,509 to the police depart­ment and City of St. Louis, accord­ing to the audit.

The police depart­ment has filed a law­suit to recover the amount under­paid and the mat­ter is the sub­ject of an ongo­ing crim­i­nal investigation.

The audit also ques­tioned why the police board paid $109,000 in sev­er­ance wages and ben­e­fits to Chief Joe Mokwa, who was ousted over the tow­ing scan­dal in July 2008. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch first reported that the police depart­ment let Mokwa’s daugh­ter and police offi­cers use towed cars.

Audi­tors also raised con­cerns about $24,000 paid to pub­lic infor­ma­tion offi­cer Richard Wilkes after he left the depart­ment in Jan­u­ary 2008.

The police depart­ment accepted free sea­son tick­ets from the St. Louis Car­di­nals for at least seven years, which may be a vio­la­tion of state law, Mon­tee said. Based on the value of sea­son tick­ets in a sim­i­lar loca­tion in the sta­dium, the approx­i­mate value of the tick­ets in 2008 alone was $19,000, she said.

In response to the audit, the police depart­ment acknowl­edged “inef­fec­tive and inef­fi­cient busi­ness prac­tices.” It said Police Chief Dan Isom, who was selected to lead the depart­ment in Octo­ber 2008, has made fix­ing “com­plete break­downs in pro­ce­dures” his priority.

“There was a lack of over­sight and a lack of account­abil­ity,” Isom said in a state­ment. “Those days are over.”

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