IAPE Evidence Blog

World­Now and KOTV, NewsOn6.com, newson6.com
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Cush­ing, OK

Dal­ton Dash Brown

CUSHING, Okla­homa — Agents with the Okla­homa State Bureau of Inves­ti­ga­tion arrested a man they say broke into a police sta­tion and stole prop­erty from the evi­dence room.

Police in Cush­ing, Okla­homa got a call about a door open on a vacant apart­ment right next to the Cush­ing police evi­dence room.

Offi­cers found that some­one had busted through the wall and into a room where they store evi­dence. Police quickly dis­cov­ered items from the prop­erty room were missing.

They tracked the break-in to Cush­ing res­i­dent, 26-year-old Dal­ton Dash Brown. He was arrested at the Payne County Cour­t­house while he was appear­ing on another bur­glary case.

After a two-day audit, police are con­fi­dent they’ve recov­ered the stolen evidence.

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

Metro Van­cou­ver, metronews.ca
BYLINE: MATT KIELTYKA, METRO VANCOUVER
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Burn­aby, BC, Canada

A City of Burn­aby employee has been fired and charged with theft for allegedly steal­ing cocaine out of RCMP evi­dence storage. 

Burn­aby RCMP announced yes­ter­day that Gary Read, a 56-year-old res­i­dent of Burn­aby and a city employee, has been charged with a sin­gle count of theft.

The alleged theft was dis­cov­ered when police con­ducted an audit of the Burn­aby detach­ment in the spring and noticed that 500 grams of cocaine was miss­ing from a drug exhibit.

Police launched an inves­ti­ga­tion that led to Read — who had over­sight of the exhibits — being charged.

Chief Supt. Dave Critch­ley said the detach­ment has revised its pol­icy and pro­ce­dures to pre­vent a sim­i­lar inci­dent in the future.

Deputy city man­ager Rick Earle said Read, a long­time city employee, has been ter­mi­nated from his job.

Read is expected to appear in Van­cou­ver provin­cial court on Dec. 13. 

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

The Daily News, galvestondailynews.com
BYLINE: Christo­pher Smith Gon­za­lez, The Daily News
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La Mar­que, TX

LA MARQUE — Drugs, money and pos­si­bly firearms all went miss­ing from the School Dis­trict Police Department’s evi­dence room at some point dur­ing the admin­is­tra­tion of the pre­vi­ous police chief, Tim­o­thy Fields, the cur­rent police chief for the school dis­trict, said.

Fields said he learned of the miss­ing items when he con­ducted an audit soon after he was appointed chief in July 2010. Fields would not go into specifics about the weapons reported missing.

Fields said he noti­fied the Texas Rangers, which often inves­ti­gates other law-enforcement agen­cies, about the miss­ing evi­dence when he first did the audit. Since then, he also has found an offense report writ­ten by a for­mer school dis­trict offi­cer on June 29, 2009 that states evi­dence had gone miss­ing, Fields said.

He also has found an April 2009 email between for­mer police Chief Rus­sell Wash­ing­ton and the school district’s human resources direc­tor dis­cussing miss­ing evi­dence, Fields said.

Wash­ing­ton could not be reached for comment.

Fields was appointed police chief after Wash­ing­ton was fired in 2010. At the time, Wash­ing­ton was under indict­ment in an alleged attempt to fal­sify doc­u­ments to obtain a title to a vehicle.

The charges were dropped, and Wash­ing­ton has demanded his old job back, along with compensation.

An inves­ti­ga­tion into the miss­ing evi­dence was under way, and no sus­pects had been iden­ti­fied, Fields said.

“This is not some­thing that was done on a whim,” Fields said of the inves­ti­ga­tion. “The only thing I’m doing is try­ing to pro­tect the integrity of the department.”

Some­one needs to be held account­able for the miss­ing evi­dence, Fields said.

He said one of the rea­sons he was adamant about fol­low­ing through with the inves­ti­ga­tion was he didn’t want to be left respon­si­ble for some­thing that did not hap­pen under his watch.

“I don’t want it to blow up in my face,” Fields said.

The miss­ing evi­dence was kept in a locked file cab­i­net in a room at the high school, Fields said. Only the school district’s police offi­cers had access to it, he said. Fields said he now is the only offi­cer who has access to that room.

He said he has asked for assis­tance from the dis­trict attorney’s office and the fed­eral Bureau of Alco­hol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explo­sives. He said Texas Rangers have come by the depart­ment and that he was work­ing with them to file the paper­work the Rangers need.

Ecomet Bur­ley, super­in­ten­dent for the La Mar­que school dis­trict, said he had been made aware of the miss­ing items by Fields.

“It is an ongo­ing inves­ti­ga­tion by the chief of police into the miss­ing items and the incon­sis­ten­cies in the report that was filed,” Bur­ley said.

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