IAPE Evidence Blog

NewburyportNews.com, newburyportnews.com
BYLINE: Angel­jean Chiaramida Staff writer
Link to Article

Sal­is­bury, MA

L’Esperance’s lawyer requests consultant’s ‘audit’ of evi­dence room

CHELSEA — The theft case against for­mer Sal­is­bury police chief David L’Esperance has been con­tin­ued to next month so both the pros­e­cu­tor and defense attor­ney can obtain an inde­pen­dent report that indi­cates that no money, drugs or other evi­dence were taken from the Sal­is­bury Police Department’s evi­dence room improp­erly dur­ing his tenure.

The con­tin­u­ance was requested yes­ter­day by L’Esperance’s lawyer, Ger­ard LaFlamme Jr., and agreed to by Ben­jamin Gold­berger, the Suf­folk County spe­cial pros­e­cu­tor han­dling the case since it was trans­ferred from Essex County to elim­i­nate the pos­si­bil­ity of a con­flict of interest.

The exis­tence of the report came to the atten­tion of LaFlamme on Thurs­day, when he read a story about it pub­lished in The Daily News, he said.

The report was writ­ten by inde­pen­dent con­sul­tant Bruce Mac­Dougall, of Munic­i­pal Resources Inc. A retired police chief from Methuen, Mac­Dougall was hired by the town of Sal­is­bury to under­take a review of a num­ber of issues after L’Esperance’s depar­ture last year under a cloud of mis­con­duct alle­ga­tions. MacDougall’s review was con­ducted last sum­mer and his report released to select­men in Octo­ber. The Daily News requested a copy of the report ear­lier this month.

Gold­berger told Chelsea Dis­trict Court Judge James Wexler that although he knew “an audit” of the evi­dence room was done, he didn’t know of the Mac­Dougall report until LaFlamme showed him the news­pa­per story in the court­room that morn­ing, right before court began.

LaFlamme said that the Mac­Dougall report showed noth­ing was miss­ing from the Sal­is­bury evi­dence room.

“The alle­ga­tions (in the theft charges) are that my client removed things from the evi­dence room,” LaFlamme said. “Since the (Daily News) pub­lished (a story on it), I think my client is enti­tled to (a copy of the report).”

Gold­berger told the judge that after read­ing the story that morn­ing, he placed a call to the Sal­is­bury Police Depart­ment to get a copy.

Wexler advised both Gold­berger and LaFlamme that they may find it help­ful to speak with Salisbury’s town coun­sel to ensure that the case is not delayed fur­ther over sim­i­lar instances.

“I’m stunned the (pros­e­cu­tor) was not pro­vided with a copy of the Mac­Dougall report,” LaFlamme said after the hear­ing con­cluded. “But it’s a reflec­tion on the attacks against Dave L’Esperance.”

The Mac­Dougall study’s con­clu­sions dis­pelled some of the accu­sa­tions made against L’Esperance, 51, in a highly pub­li­cized report released last year. That 31-page report, writ­ten by Robert St. Pierre and released last Jan­u­ary, accused L’Esperance of 15 vio­la­tions of police pol­icy for mis­con­duct, such as mis­han­dling evi­dence seized by police at drug busts, improp­erly grant­ing favors, nepo­tism and trad­ing drugs for sex with known crim­i­nals. The Mac­Dougall report appears to clear L’Esperance of at least two accu­sa­tions related to han­dling of evidence.

L’Esperance retired from the police depart­ment in Jan­u­ary 2011, effec­tively resign­ing as Salisbury’s chief, while the St. Pierre report was under way. Although no crim­i­nal charges have resulted from the alle­ga­tions made against him in the St. Pierre report, he cur­rently faces theft charges relat­ing to his con­duct while police chief.

The charges

The first set of theft charges were filed against L’Esperance in July, the result of evi­dence unearthed by two inves­ti­ga­tions, led by St. Pierre, into the depart­ment, both com­mis­sioned by the town of Sal­is­bury. Accord­ing to court doc­u­ments, L’Esperance is charged with receiv­ing stolen prop­erty, specif­i­cally a World War II-era det­o­na­tor plunger device worth more than $250 (a felony) and a Hells Angels book­let worth less than $250 (a mis­de­meanor) from the for­mer home of David Plonowski, 28 Pike St., Sal­is­bury. Plonowski’s home was raided in 2007 fol­low­ing a drug investigation.

A sec­ond felony count involves the alleged mis­ap­pro­pri­a­tion of a 2001 Dodge Dakota pickup truck with 387,000 miles given to the town by local heavy con­struc­tion com­pany SPS New Eng­land in June 2010. Accord­ing to court doc­u­ments, L’Esperance picked up the truck and parked it at the Sal­is­bury Fire Depart­ment for a few months, then in fall 2010, gave the truck to Bryan Flem­ing, owner of Honks Mar­tin Road Sal­vage in Ames­bury, who sold it. Accord­ing to Sal­is­bury Town Man­ager Neil Har­ring­ton, L’Esperance didn’t have per­mis­sion to give away the truck.

Dropped in the first set of charges was one mis­de­meanor charge of steal­ing $50 worth of tools from the car trunk of a Lawrence man who was arrested. Accord­ing to Goldberger’s motion to dis­miss, the charge was dropped because of a lack of evidence.

On Dec. 23, L’Esperance was arraigned on a sec­ond set of theft-related charges filed by Sal­is­bury. They include one count of lar­ceny of prop­erty worth more than $250 (a plow) and two counts of lar­ceny of a motor vehi­cle, a Chevro­let Tahoe SUV and Harley-Davidson motor­cy­cle. The new charges again relate to the April 2007 raid and arrest at the Plonowski home.

The seizure took place after Plonowski’s arrest, and the vehi­cles and plow were ordered taken and held by Simmie’s Tow­ing, Gold­berger said at the arraign­ment. It was Plonowski’s wife who told town offi­cials that L’Esperance ordered the prop­erty seized, towed and held, Gold­berger said. The prop­erty was never returned to Plonowski’s wife, he added.

Sal­is­bury police also filed a crim­i­nal com­plaint alleg­ing that L’Esperance vio­lated Plonowski’s wife’s civil rights over the seizures, but the clerk mag­is­trate found insuf­fi­cient prob­a­ble cause to bring the com­plaint for­ward. Gold­berger filed a motion to have the civil rights charge reviewed by a judge to pos­si­bly rein­state it. Wexler denied the Gold­berger motion yesterday.

“I’m very happy Judge Wexler ruled as he did,” LaFlamme said.

The Plonowski case

On April 9, 2007, after a five-month drug inves­ti­ga­tion by the North­east Mer­ri­mack Val­ley Drug Task Force from Sal­is­bury, Ames­bury and Mer­ri­mack, police exe­cuted a war­rant on the Pike Street home of David Plonowski on charges of pos­ses­sion of cocaine with intent to dis­trib­ute. Police acted after neigh­bors reported a high level of traf­fic com­ing to and from the house. In addi­tion, dur­ing a Feb­ru­ary 2007 domes­tic abuse case there, police noticed weapons in the home. Plonowski’s firearms ID card had expired.

On the day of the raid, police broke down the front door, find­ing a lit­tle more than a half-ounce of cocaine, a loaded .22-caliber hand­gun and about $1,000 in cash. But as they searched, police found such a huge cache of weaponry that the State Police bomb squad was called, neigh­bors were evac­u­ated and the area closed to traf­fic for hours.

Court records indi­cate that police found 241 unique and pos­si­bly antique pieces of weaponry, includ­ing ammu­ni­tion, knives, swords, hand grenades, rifles, hand­guns, land mines and one 81 mm mor­tar shell. Drugs and drug para­pher­na­lia were also found, accord­ing to court records.

Plonowski was imme­di­ately taken into cus­tody and taken to the Sal­is­bury police sta­tion. An uniden­ti­fied woman with him was taken into pro­tec­tive cus­tody because she was ine­bri­ated, but she was not charged.

Plonowski was charged with 36 counts. A year later, through a plea deal, all but three counts were dropped. He was con­victed on two counts of pos­ses­sion of cocaine with intent to dis­trib­ute and car­ry­ing a firearm with­out a license. He was sen­tenced to two and a half to four years in state prison.

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

NBC 10 WJAR, Turn to 10.com, turnto10.com
BYLINE: Jim Taricani

Woonsocket, RI

Evi­dence in a crim­i­nal case involv­ing the Woonsocket Police Depart­ment is miss­ing, the NBC 10 I-Team reported Thursday.

The I-Team found out that two years ago, a stolen gold neck­lace and a bracelet were found in a Woonsocket pawn shop.

The Woonsocket police put the neck­lace and the bracelet in their evi­dence locker.

But in Decem­ber, when the attor­ney gen­eral needed the evi­dence to pros­e­cute the case, Woonsocket police couldn’t find the gold neck­lace, report­edly worth $22,000.

A source with knowl­edge of the case told the I-Team that it’s the sec­ond time the Woonsocket police depart­ment lost evi­dence in a crim­i­nal case within sev­eral months.

This time, the source said, sev­eral offi­cers put on the gold neck­lace and, mak­ing “gangsta” signs, had their pic­tures taken with it.

The pawn shop, accord­ing to the source, paid $11,000 for the neck­lace and the bracelet, not know­ing the items were stolen.

When the owner of the neck­lace and the bracelet tried to get them from the police depart­ment, the owner got only the bracelet.

Police had no expla­na­tion for the miss­ing $22,000 gold necklace.

The Woonsocket Police Depart­ment released a state­ment to the I-Team:

“A crim­i­nal case con­cluded in the courts. There was prop­erty from that case to be returned to its owner. Ini­tially it was not located. But, an inter­nal audit of the prop­erty evi­dence room is under­way to locate it,” Lt. Eugene Jalette said.

The attor­ney general’s office would not con­firm nor deny it is investigating.

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

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
“Law Enforce­ment Serv­ing the Needs of Law Enforce­ment”
www.IAPE.org